Agency spending on overtime in New York reached an all-time high of nearly $1 billion last year following a long decline in the public workforce, a new report by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has found.
“The state needs to continue to attract and retain a range of diverse employees to be responsive to 21st Century needs, and to ensure that services are provided in a cost-effective manner without excessive use of overtime,” he said.
The issue was particularly acute in the Department of Correction and Community Supervision, the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities and the Office of Mental Health, which the report found accounted for two-thirds of all overtime spending by state agencies in 2021.
The $924 million in overtime made by workers at all state agencies is an 8.7% jump from last year, making it the most the state has paid on OT as a share of payroll since the comptroller’s office began tracking such states in 2007.
“While the pandemic does not appear to have prompted a ‘great resignation’ from the state workforce in 2020, new hiring stalled, and the workforce declined more sharply in 2021 than in the prior decade,” DiNapoili, a Democrat, explained in a press release.
State police are the most handsomely paid state workers covered by the report, with $83.13 per overtime hour on average. CUNY and Unified Court System pros come in second and third with respective average OT rates of $63.38 and $59.41.
People working for the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities receive relatively paltry overtime pay of $34.25.
The office has lost 18.7% of its workplace in the last decade – the highest of any state agency – an undesirable distinction that it also held in 2020 and 2021 as COVID-19 swept the state.
“It’s no coincidence that the use of overtime went up as state government delivered essential services and responded to the needs of New Yorkers during an unprecedented pandemic and amid pandemic-related staffing issues. We will continue efficiently and effectively making government work for New Yorkers,” Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said in an email.
A total of 8,113 state employees left their jobs last year, but any savings from their departure are undermined by the OT paid to former colleagues picking up extra hours.
“As the State workforce has been reduced, total overtime hours and earnings have increased,” states the report.