DORI MONSON

SPD’s overtime scandal another reason to reject tax increases

Oct 1, 2014, 1:36 PM | Updated: 4:38 pm

A new report from the Office of Professional Accountability says a department of the SPD exceeded their overtime budget by $1 million. (MyNorthwest.com/Alyssa Kleven)

(MyNorthwest.com/Alyssa Kleven)

Taken from The Dori Monson Show.

We’re watching out for your tax dollars here with this report that the Seattle Police Department wasted $1 million tax dollars with excessive overtime.

This is what I talk about all that time. I truly believe that we could cut government spending in half. The reason I think you could cut government spending in half without any negative effect on the essential job of government is because there is so much waste.

In this report, the Office of Professional Accountability found $1 million in excessive overtime in the Education and Training Section of the Seattle Police Department. They found that the supervisors failed to keep overtime spending within budget.

“OPA found that ETS exceeded its 2013 overtime budget by more than one million dollars,” says the report.

Before I got salaried at KING 5, I was hourly. I worked so many hours off the clock. I was just working constantly. But there was one time where I had a legit 12 hour day and I put down 4 hours of overtime and immediately I was called into the news director who told me, ‘We can’t pay this. It wasn’t pre-approved.’ I think I was being paid $6.50 an hour, so time and a half would have been $9.75 an hour. It was four hours of overtime. We were talking about $40. And I was getting killed by my manager for $40.

But in the government sector, in the Seattle Police Department, they exceeded the overtime budget by $1 million. And according to the report, the money spent produced “little of value.” One employee even once received more overtime than the day has hours.

“One ETS employee was found to have been paid overtime that exceeded the hours available in a day. The employee was paid for 31.5 hours of overtime for one day. The employee’s supervisor approved that timesheet,” says the report.

Pierce Murphy, the director of the department’s Office of Professional Accountability, told this to KIRO 7:

“We didn’t find any corruption in this case, but the management controls really weren’t in place.”

What is the solution to this?

The solution is to say no every time they come to you for tax increases because that demands accountability. If you restrict the flow of money going to government, at some point, government is going to have to be efficient. Government would have to say you know what, we’re not going to approve 31.5 hours of overtime earned in one single day.

This is your money. You get out of bed every morning. You go work a job. You put your most precious thing that any of us have – your time – into your job. In exchange, you get a paycheck. With that paycheck, you get to not only provide for your life, but maybe you get to go on a vacation with your family, maybe you get to take care of your kid’s college education, maybe you won’t have to worry about retirement if you’re diligent.

But the more of that money that is taken from you by government for things like this overtime scandal – a million dollars – the more you are being deprived of your most precious commodity. I’m not talking about your money, but your time that you put into earning that money. Don’t let them steal it from you. Just say no.

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

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