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| Colorado's prison guard overtime explodes by $9 million annually |
| By denverpost.com - Christopher N. Osher |
| Published: 01/06/2014 |
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Legislation that turned a shuttered prison in rural Fort Lyon into a facility to aid the state's homeless included provisions that have escalated overtime costs for Colorado's prison guards by $9 million annually, a legislative analysis has found. Prior to passage of the legislation, the Corrections Department computed overtime for corrections officers using a 28-day work period. The legislation, sponsored and pushed by leading Democratic legislators, ended up shortening those work periods to 14 days. It further required overtime pay when hours worked by a corrections officer exceeded 85 hours in a 14-day work period and when officers worked 12 or more hours in a 24-hour period. "Since both of these provisions refer to payment for the overtime, the department concludes that the provisions eliminate the department's previous discretionary ability to pay cash for overtime or award compensatory time," states a recent analysis by Steve Allen, a staffer for the Joint Budget Committee. Allen recommends a legislative fix be made to "eliminate some of the unintended overtime consequences of the bill, thus aligning costs more closely with the fiscal note." The Joint Budget Committee, which forwards funding recommendations that the full legislature votes on, is scheduled to discuss the issue Monday. Allen said in his analysis that he and the Department of Corrections drastically underestimated the impact the scheduling provisions in Senate Bill 210 would have on overtime costs. Read More. |
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