Montgomery County police officers failed to submit required documentation with one-quarter of their requests for overtime pay — and of the records properly submitted, 20 percent were missing a supervisor’s signature, according to an independent audit. Police overtime — which is worth at least 1.5 times officers’ hourly compensation — accounts for roughly one-fourth of Montgomery’s total overtime expenses annually, costing county taxpayers roughly $10 million in fiscal 2010.
But the police department “is not consistently and appropriately reviewing and authorizing all overtime,” according to an audit prepared by Virginia accounting firm, Cherry, Bekaert & Holland.
Police officers are required to individually document every time they work beyond regular hours and attach those records — with a supervisor’s signature — to biweekly payroll time sheets.
One or more overtime records were missing from 26 percent of the time sheets, but the county paid the employees what they requested anyway.
“We … found out that all unverified requests were subsequently paid, when the time sheet was submitted to county payroll without correction by the employee’s supervisor,” the audit read. “According to a payroll manager, it is not payroll’s duty to review the overtime requests submitted.”
Of the overtime records that were submitted, one in five were missing a supervisor’s signature to verify the employee actually worked beyond their scheduled hours.
Montgomery Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said he is working to increase payroll oversight.
“The message of tighter review of overtime requests has been and will continue to be a message I send to every manager in this department,” Manger wrote in a response to the audit.
Auditors also found that Montgomery residents could be paying overtime to police officers who say they are in court but never show up.
When officers are called to court, they are paid a minimum of three hours in overtime pay, no matter how long the court appointment lasts. No records are kept on whether officers actually show up in court, even though court time accounts for 38 percent of all the department’s overtime expenses.
“An officer could spend an entire day attending three consecutive dockets and there would be no record of the officer’s attendance,” according to the audit. If the officer has multiple hearings in one day or is called to court on his day off, he is paid even more.
The auditors further noted that the court booking system is outdated and does not consider officers’ schedules, meaning “double bookings are a common issue.”
Some states use an electronic system to track officers arriving or leaving a courthouse. Manger said the department would need the police union’s permission to implement such a program.
The department has limited options in avoiding double-booking, because Maryland law prevents officers from scheduling their own court appearances, Manger added.
“While we did not find any actual cases of waste, fraud or abuse during our audit,” the auditors concluded, “we found noncompliance with existing policies and procedures and poor controls, which can cause serious accountability issues.”
