The State Worker: Column extra: Correctional officer overtime

The State Worker

Chronicling civil-service life for California state workers

September 10, 2009

Column extra: Correctional officer overtime

With just 400 to 450 words for our Thursday State Worker column, much of what we learn in the ramp up to writing it never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that don't make the cut.

Today we looked a bit at state correctional officer overtime through the lens of Tuesday's CDCR report by the Bureau of State Audits. (We blogged about the report when it was released. Click here for that report.)

The column in today's fiber and cyber Bee includes overtime figures for this calendar year that weren't part of the audit. As we noted, the numbers are down significantly from last year.

You can click this link to see the year-over-year January through June numbers we received from Corrections in response to our request for overtime figures. Disregard the last paragraph leading into the 2008 numbers: Department Deputy Director for Fiscal Services Dave Lewis told us in an interview on Wednesday that the drop in OT this year isn't a result of furloughs. Instead, as the column mentions, it's from policy changes that exclude leave time from counting toward the threshold for overtime and an influx of new hires through last year.

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