Henrico sheriff's deputies rack up overtime

More than 100 Henrico County sheriff's deputies have racked up overtime that added at least an extra 25 percent to their salaries, according to a review by the county auditor.

The review found 104 of the sheriff's department's 319 staff members were paid overtime that exceeded 25 percent of their salaries. Four of them received overtime payments that more than doubled their take-home pay.

The deputies' names were not included in the auditor's report and were not made available by the sheriff's department.

Overtime payments to sheriff's department employees run about $3 million a year and have held steady this year compared with last year. The payments account for slightly more than one-third of the county's total overtime bill, which has been running about 6 percent below last year's level.

The sheriff's office receives $34 million a year of the county's $772 million general fund budget.

The overtime was only for jail and courthouse security work, the audit found -- unlike in some jurisdictions around the country where deputies can get large overtime payments by volunteering for other kinds of security work, such as guarding libraries or waterworks.

"We just don't have the luxury to leave posts unstaffed," Sheriff Mike Wade said. "We have the same number of deputies we had in 1996, when we had 600 inmates. Now we're up at 1,200."

In written comments, County Manager Virgil R. Hazelett said the county will continue paying the overtime because it is important to keep jail security details fully staffed. The audit did not recommend any disciplinary action.

Wade said he has asked the State Compensation Board, which funds part of jails' operating costs, to study Henrico's staffing needs, with a view to increasing its funding.

But while the board agreed to do the study in November 2006, and a Department of Corrections official visited the jail the following year to study its operations, Wade said he has never seen a report.

He said the corrections department official told him that Henrico needed about 80 more deputies to handle the number of inmates in its jails. "It seems to have gotten lost in the system," he said of that finding.

Robyn M. de Socio, executive secretary to the State Compensation Board, said the board has a large backlog of such studies and that she will check on the Henrico study's status.

Henrico tries to cap overtime at 25 percent of salary as a management tool, Finance Director John A. Vithoulkas said. One reason is that when overtime starts building up, it sometimes means employees are padding claims or that work isn't being done efficiently.

"That's not the story here," Vithoulkas said. "What it says to me is that they are utilizing overtime to meet standards that are pretty much handed down by the state. . . . When you look at the revenue that comes down from the state, they say, 'You've got to do this and you've got to do that, but there's no more money.'"

Wade said almost all the overtime accrued by his department came from an unexpected need.

"You always have someone out sick, or you get an inmate who's ill and you need to have a deputy there with him in the hospital, or you've got to transport somebody who's been TDOed," Wade said, referring to the temporary detention order that magistrates issue directing someone to a mental hospital for evaluation.

Watching a troubled person through the process of contact with a social worker, a magistrate's review and to the hospital can take hours of time, police and deputies across the state say.

Wade told the auditor that there is a core group of deputies assigned to the county's jails who routinely volunteer to work overtime. Henrico assigned 50 deputies to courthouse security duties, 10 to its transport unit to take inmates to and from court hearings, and two to civil process -- serving court papers to people.

In the past five years, the county auditor has performed 47 audits of county departments, three of which focused on sheriff's department operations. The reviews of the sheriff's office have found it complied with all state laws, regulations and procedures involving state money.

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or dress@timesdispatch.com.