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Report: King County overpaid overtime to sheriff's deputies by $5.5M

A report released by the King County auditor Tuesday morning found sheriff's deputies were overpaid in overtime, costing the county millions of dollars since 2012.

“Roughly $5.5 million through 2016,” auditor Justin Anderson told the King County Government Accountability and Oversight Committee.

He and his three other team members stated that officers are paid an additional amount of money during overtime to compensate for things like their level of training or degrees. This could not be accurately calculated by the county prior to 2012, so King County devised a way, the auditors said, to approximate the calculations.

But, auditors said,
in 2012, a new payroll system rolled out that was able to accurately calculate these additional payments for overtime premiums.

Since then, the report stated, both payments have gone out to deputies, effectively paying them
twice in "two separate overtime premiums."

“We care about our police department, but that’s excessive!” Burien resident Robin McDougall said.

“Five million dollars stands out,” King County Councilmember and chairman of the Government Accountability and Oversight committee Pete von Reichbauer said. “We’re going to have a very serious discussion at… the next meeting of the GAO committee about the five million dollars. How did we get there? How do we correct the problem?”

While he was aware of the payments, the amount also surprised Sheriff John Urquhart.

“As a taxpayer, it is ridiculous,” he said. “The Sheriff's Office has known about them ever since they started, which is at least back in 2012 when they changed computer systems.”

KIRO 7 asked the Office of Labor Relations why the extra payments were not eliminated.

By phone, Director Megan Pedersen told KIRO 7 that in 2012-2013, the county was in collective bargaining with the officers’ guild for a new contract. But amidst negotiations, the guild did not want to drop the second payment, and the county, Pedersen said, had to deal with other things that could provide bigger savings. She said they also wrote another option into the contract designed to save money on overtime, but decided not to implement it because the county couldn’t be sure how much money it would truly save.

“I think that's kind of outrageous, really,” Burien resident Noelle Sison said. “Honestly, I would kind of hope they could fix it.”

The report outlines 12 recommendations, with 11 to the Sheriff's Office and one recommendation to the executive body.

The report also found the Sheriff’s Office relies heavily on overtime to meet staffing minimums, which is cheaper than hiring because of benefits and other requirements per officer.

However, auditors stated there are potential safety impacts based on how many hours of overtime a deputy works; auditors stated additional overtime increased the chances of complaints, incidents of use of force and vehicle accidents.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff's Office limit how many hours patrol officers can work in overtime and to accurate track their overtime hours when they work off-duty, in positions like security or traffic control.

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