Agency blows through $48m annual budget
Metro spent $49 million on overtime in the first seven months of its fiscal year, blowing through its entire $48 million overtime budget and on pace to spend far more than it has in recent years.
| Overtime paid out |
| Fiscal 2008: $74.2 million |
| Fiscal 2009: $62.1 million |
| Fiscal 2010: $75.2 million |
| Fiscal 2011: $49 million as of January, budgeted at $48.4 million |
| Note: Metro’s fiscal year starts July 1 |
The transit agency spent $49 million on overtime by the end of January, an average of about $7,000 for each employee. That could put its overtime costs at $84 million for the year if the pace continues, far more than the $75 million it spent last year.
Metro officials declined to say how many employees received the overtime, or even how many are eligible to receive it. But if all of Metro’s 10,853 budgeted workers for 2010 earned overtime, they would have taken home an average of $6,926 extra on top of their regular wages in the last budget year.
The actual amount is likely far larger, though, because most administrative and managerial workers aren’t eligible for overtime, reducing the number of workers sharing the pie.
In the current budget, Metro has planned for 152,927 hours of nonscheduled overtime for train operators. That’s the equivalent of 52 extra train operators working eight hours every day of the year — and earning $45.77 per hour. That’s $7 million just for the nonscheduled overtime.
Metro also planned to pay out 56,478 hours of nonscheduled overtime for bus operators, at an average cost of $24.19 per hour, for a total of $1.4 million.
This all assumes a $48 million overtime budget, before the agency had exceeded that amount.
Some overtime work is inevitable when the agency runs extra service for special events or must cover for vacationing workers. But Metro has blamed the overall maintenance workload for causing the higher overtime rate as it tries to fix a backlog of maintenance projects such as broken escalators, crumbling platforms and aging tracks.
It also has cited a high number of vacancies for causing the overtime to escalate, but also keeping the overall budget in check. The agency says it has 814 empty slots, with 138 in the bus division, 98 in rail and 27 openings in Metro Transit Police.
“Because we have so many vacancies, we have to give employees extra shifts to fill operating slots. That means people are paid more overtime and that drives up the overtime cost,” Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said in an e-mail. “With that said, overtime costs are being offset to some extent by the vacancy savings.”
Overtime costs are $20.4 million over budget, Metro told a D.C. Council oversight hearing last week, yet salary and wages are under budget by $16.4 million, primarily because of such vacancies.
Typically, Metro loses about 10 bus operators per month, but a six-month hiring freeze caused a backlog that has rippled through the work force, leaving one in eight station manager slots empty as of December. Bus operators are typically entry-point jobs, so it causes a domino effect as workers move to station manager slots or train operator positions.
Still, even as Metro is trying to fill the backlog with new recruits, it is projecting to spend about $57 million in overtime next year though the agency faces a $72.5 million budget shortfall.
