In addition to their tax rebate checks, several Hamilton County jailers are likely to get a windfall in back overtime pay this year — some of them as much as several thousand dollars’ worth, according to Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department officials.
After a U.S. Department of Labor mandate forced department officials to spend more than a month calculating missed overtime payments, sheriff’s department officials learned they owe 147 of their past and present corrections officers a total of $145,089 from overtime accrued between June 2005 and June 2007, said Director of Administration Don Gorman.
The department is ready to disburse the money in lump sums ranging from about $35 to about $6,300 per officer as soon as it receives a go-ahead from federal officials, Mr. Gorman said.
“Once they approve it, and we tell the employees and they agree to accept it, we can cut them a check,” Mr. Gorman said.
Department of Labor spokesman Michael Wald said Wednesday that the investigation is still ongoing on his agency’s end. He could not provide a specific timeline for completion.
Their probe began after a jail employee registered a complaint last fall, just prior to department officials learning that the problem may have existed through several administrations, said Chief Deputy Allen Branum.
“We’d been looking for years and years,” Chief Branum said. “We knew it was a problem.”
Mr. Gorman has said officials are not sure what may have prompted the pay misunderstanding in the first place, but they believe it started long before their former boss, recently resigned Sheriff Billy Long, took office in September 2006.
Mr. Long faces federal extortion, money laundering, firearm and drug charges in an unrelated case.
The pay issue arose because officers were required to arrive 15 minutes early to attend mandatory shift meetings, and officers on the next shift had to stay on the floor an extra 15 minutes before they were relieved, Chief Branum said. Many of the officers were not getting paid for that time, he said.
Though the officers have yet to hear officially how much money they each will be getting, they are “fairly ecstatic” at the prospect of receiving anything, according to Chattanooga Police Sgt. Julie Dean, the president of the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.
Sgt. Dean represents several jailers and said Wednesday that her members are “all kind of relieved that they’ve been putting in this required time and they’re finally getting their pay, because they feel it’s justified.”
Department officials were happy to rethink the issue, according to Mr. Gorman, who said improved access to e-mail at the jail within the last three months has eliminated the need for the shift meetings at all.
Officials were even happier to learn that the amount of extra money they will pay out is less than half of the $370,000 they had originally estimated it could be, Mr. Gorman said.
That amount will come relatively comfortably from the money the department has in reserves to pay the salaries of 20 budgeted positions that are currently empty, he said.
“We’re still in good shape as far as our budget,” Mr. Gorman said.
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