Options to overtime

Supervisors should take a hard look at the Linn County Sheriff's Office's use of overtime as they look for ways to slash costs in the next fiscal year.

The Sheriff's Office already has paid more than $400,000 in overtime expenses since July 1. A total of $1.2 million is earmarked for overtime pay in this fiscal year.

Jailers and patrol deputies pick up most of the extra hours.

A Gazette analysis shows that 19 Linn County deputies earned more than $20,000 in overtime during the last fiscal year. One deputy nearly doubled his annual salary in overtime by putting in several hundred extra hours.

Which makes us wonder, in addition to the cost, if it's safe to have jail staff and patrol officers working so many hours. At what point do they become too tired to be effective at their job?

Surely some overtime hours always will be necessary to deal with unexpected events, or to fill in when the department is short staffed. But overtime should be used to alleviate a temporary situation, not relied on to get routine work done.

Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner told a Gazette reporter that use of overtime is partly due to understaffing.

“We've always been behind on hiring deputies,” Gardner told the reporter.

He said that supervisors denied his request this spring for four new positions. He said he also can have a hard time filling the jobs he does have.

New deputies don't want to wait out their first several years as jailers while they earn seniority that will allow them more highly coveted patrol spots, he said.

But seniority arrangements are common in law enforcement, unionized or not. “That's just pretty much the way it's been standardized across the country,” Patrick McGinn, Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association board member told us this week.

McGinn, a lieutenant with the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office, said it can be hard for any law enforcement department to find good, qualified candidates. Requirements for sworn officers are, rightly, strict.

Applicants must pass a battery of tests and successfully complete training at the state law enforcement academy.

McGinn agreed that applicants might be deterred from an agency if they know it might take years to get on patrol.

Still, that doesn't mean there are no options other than lots of overtime.

For more than two decades in Pottawattamie County, for example, the county jail has been staffed by trained civilians, not sworn deputies. McGinn told us it helps with recruitment and also saves the county money.

Maybe that approach isn't the best answer in Linn County. Some compromise in the seniority practice might help.

Most important before budgeting another $1 million-plus for overtime next year, county officials should make sure they've explored every viable option.