OT CLAIMS SKYROCKET INVESTIGATORS PROBE DOUBLE, TRIPLE SALARIES FOR WORKERS.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Before undercover surveillance investigators caught up with her, Probation Department secretary Debra Brown-Patton claimed 762 hours of overtime she never worked.

She also falsely claimed 52 hours of compensatory time, cheating taxpayers out of a total of $20,640, Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller records show.

``She was regularly modifying her time card after approval by her supervisor to add overtime hours,'' said Robert Campbell, supervising investigator in the auditor's Office of Investigations.

Patton, 49, pleaded no contest in July to a felony count of grand theft and was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service and repay the money to the county, prosecutors said. She was fired from her job.

The case of Patton - one of a rapidly growing number of county employees fired and disciplined for overtime abuses - comes more than a year after the Board of Supervisors directed officials to rein in excessive overtime. And officials have again begun to question time card abuse as - coupled with understaffed departments - county overtime costs have continued to soar.

For the last fiscal year ended June 30, the county overspent its overtime budget by $48 million, with total overtime costs shooting up 14 percent from the previous year to $354 million.

In January - a month that saw record flooding ravage the county - about 3,000 employees racked up overtime equal to 50 percent or more of their salaries, about 350 employees doubled their salaries and 16 tripled their pay.

So far this fiscal year, in October alone nearly 5,600 employees earned overtime equal to half or more of their pay, 520 more than doubled their income, and 50 more than tripled their salaries, according to a new overtime report.

Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said the main reason the county overspent its OT budget last fiscal year is because the understaffed Sheriff's Department has had to ask deputies to work double shifts while reopening jails and attempting to increase the amount of time inmates serve.

The sheriff's OT budget jumped from $75 million in 2003-04 to $123 million last fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the Probation Department's OT budget more than doubled from $6 million in 2003-04 to $13 million last year, primarily due to federal requirements that the department increase its ratio of staff to youths in juvenile halls.

In addition, however, more than a quarter of Probation Department staff also are off work on long-term disability claims, requiring employees to work more OT.

``Primarily, it's an increase in workers' compensation claims driven by a change in the state labor code, which provides more generous benefits to staff who are off work,'' said Robert Smythe, chief of administrative services.

``Some would interpret that as an incentive for staff to stay off longer when they have a work injury.''

But some officials also have begun to question whether even more needs to be done to curb time card fraud and rising overtime costs.

``There is no question we have to get a handle on it,'' said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district encompasses Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center, where numerous workers have been disciplined or fired for time card abuses.

``I think overtime is often utilized on a friendship basis to give to some people as a perk. I think there is a lot of abuse in that way,'' she said.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said the soaring numbers of employees doubling and tripling their incomes with OT makes it clear ``extraordinary abuse'' is occurring.

``Perhaps at this point, a policy of no overtime whatsoever unless it's specifically approved by managers is the policy they need to pursue,'' Coupal said.

The supervisors began cracking down on excessive overtime after the Daily News revealed in June 2004 that 390 employees in the sheriff's, health and probation departments boosted their salaries more than 50 percent with OT and eight more than doubled their pay.

In August 2004, supervisors directed officials to generate monthly reports tracking employees who are paid overtime in excess of 50 percent of their regular salaries.

The reports are sent to administrative deputies in each of the departments for review to ensure the extra pay is justified.

But some county officials question whether departments are actually using the reports, which often range up to 700 pages.

Lori Glasgow, a deputy to Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, said the supervisor plans to ask officials to prepare summaries of the reports to make them easier to read.

``The supervisor is very concerned about fraud, abuse or waste anytime it occurs in county government,'' Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said.

``We will follow up on our previous investigation and the findings to ensure a corrective action plan is in place,'' Bell said.

The effort comes just months after supervisors - concerned that dozens of county employees are on track to earn more than $100,000 in OT this year - voted to review time card protocols.

Some of the supervisors cited possible widespread time card abuses in the county, saying managers had become ``robotic'' in signing off on time cards and that doctors were drawing full salaries at county hospitals while working at private offices. In one case, the county paid an MLK radiologist $1.3 million during a 12-month period in which the doctor said he worked 24-hour days for weeks at a time.

An August audit of 86 county doctors found dates and times on nearly half of their time cards conflicted with staffing schedules. In some cases, doctors had claimed reimbursement for time at the gym, private practice or home.

At the time, Antonovich said he planned to ask the Auditor's Office to expand its time card fraud probes beyond the Health Department.

But Assistant Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe said her office never received such a directive and is limiting the focus of its main probe to the Health Department.

The number of county employees disciplined or fired for time card and related abuses has more than tripled since 2000 to 36 so far this year, according to Fraud Hotline reports.

Countywide, the auditor's Office of Investigations has probed 699 time card abuse cases since 2000, substantiating 133. As of Dec. 12, the office had 105 cases still to investigate.

The office's number of investigations rose from 99 in 2000 to 218 last year. The number of substantiated cases rose from 17 in 2000 to 34 last year.

Although auditors have referred five suspected time card fraud cases to the District Attorney's Office in the past few years, Watanabe said the cases are difficult and time-consuming to investigate. Only two have been prosecuted, including Patton.

Campbell said he only has 10 investigators, and a single case of suspected timecard fraud takes three or four surveillance investigators weeks to probe.

This year, auditors have found several cases in the Health Department in which supervisors did not properly monitor overtime hours. In one case, a health employee attended school while on county time with her supervisor's approval.

Despite cases of abuse, county officials say the vast majority of county workers are hard-working, honest public servants who often have thankless jobs.

For instance, at the Los Angeles County Morgue, cemetery caretaker Albert Gaskin is often required to work both the night shift and the day shift, cremating nine to 12 bodies a day of people for whom officials have been unable to locate next of kin.

Gaskin, one of two licensed workers for the job, earned $35,138 in regular pay as of Oct. 31, plus an additional $35,138 in OT.

Gaskin said he wasn't allowed to talk to reporters, but LAC-USC Chief Liaison Officer Stephen Matthews said the pay ``is just unbelievably low for what these guys do'' and the county plans to hire a third worker to help.

``The workload has always been exceedingly high and it's difficult to find people to do this job,'' Matthews said.

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

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LOS ANGELES COUNTY OVERTIME

SOURCE: Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller

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