By Soumya Karlamangla and Dan Weikel
Los Angeles Times
Last year, the average employee who paints stripes on roads and installs street signs for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation made $48,100 in overtime, almost six times what most other city workers received.
Four supervisors claimed $70,000 in OT, and one manager drew $155,319, effectively tripling his salary.
Those and other findings were in a transportation department audit issued Tuesday by City Controller Ron Galperin. It revealed in particular that workers in the paint and sign division collected what Galperin characterized as “staggering” amounts of overtime, costing the city $3.3 million in a single year and raising concerns that some of the extra pay might have been claimed improperly.
According to the audit, almost half the 67 employees in the paint and sign division claimed more than 1,000 hours of overtime in 2013-14. Seven claimed 2,000 hours, which would be an average of 38 extra hours of work per week.
Overall, the transportation department, which provided a paycheck to 1,961 workers last year, paid more overtime in 2013-14 than any other city department except the Fire Department.
Galperin also found that a provision in the department’s labor agreement allowed some employees to collect overtime even if their workweek included vacation or sick days.
For example, an employee could collect 10 hours of overtime if they were scheduled to work 10 hours a day Monday through Thursday, took a vacation or sick day Thursday, then worked 10 hours on Friday.
The audit notes that about half the city’s labor agreements allow this practice. By eliminating the provision, the controller estimated that the transportation department alone could save $1.2 million in payroll costs annually.
“Overtime abuses like this jeopardize trust in local government and absolutely must be corrected,” said City Councilman Mike Bonin, who chairs the council’s transportation committee. The “audit highlights crucial improvements that must be made” to protect taxpayers.
Galperin said the amount of overtime combined with a lack of proper controls within the department raised questions about whether employees truly worked all the extra hours.
“One might reasonably conclude that at least some of the employees in the traffic paint and sign section were committing payroll fraud,” the audit stated. But at this time, the report said, there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal investigation.
Although overtime is often appropriate, Galperin said, department officials were unable to show that the overtime had been approved or detail the work done.
“There is not evidence to show that the work was not done,” he said, “but then again, there is not evidence to show what was done.”
Appearing at a news conference with Galperin, Seleta Reynolds, the new general manager of the city’s transportation department, said she had accepted the findings and promised to reform the agency’s overtime policies.
She said one supervisor has been removed and another assigned to a different city department. Reynolds declined to elaborate, stating that personnel matters are confidential under state law. Both workers, however, remain city employees, she said.
Reynolds said some of the surge in overtime could have resulted from increasing workloads. When Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was in office, more than 100 miles of bike lanes and thousands of miles of resurfaced city streets needed to be striped.
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