TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A report released Wednesday found that nearly a dozen local governments awarded overtime or comp time to their executives in violation of state law.
New Jersey’s Office of the State Comptroller investigated more than a dozen local governments in all regions of the state.
The probe found that of 14 governments, six paid nearly $200,000 in overtime to high-level employees in 2010 and 2011 without passing a required public ordinance. They were identified as Hunterdon County, Elmwood Park, Paterson, Pemberton, Rahway and Wallington.
The investigation also found that 10 of the governments gave out more than 4,000 hours of comp time without passing an ordinance. Those included Fairfield in Cumberland County; Garfield, Northfield, Paterson, Pemberton, Rahway, Toms River, Wallington, Elmwood Park and Hunterdon County.
“It was particularly inappropriate for these managers to receive compensatory time since that benefit originally was intended to be an alternative to cash-strapped local governments paying overtime to non-managerial employees,” the report concluded.
The report cited one official in Wallington who made nearly $20,000 in overtime that he calculated and approved himself. Another town official made about $10,000 in overtime for work during hours he was supposed to be working at municipal jobs in two other towns. He continued to receive his same paycheck from the other towns, the report found.
Many of the overtime hours in Wallington and Paterson were related to Hurricane Irene, the report said.
The report also found that the use of comp time allowed some departing executives to cash in more unused vacation time than they otherwise would have, so that “a mechanism that was intended to protect and conserve local resources was instead transformed into a lucrative fringe benefit for high-level officials.”
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Online:
https://www.nj.gov/comptroller/news/docs/report_municipal_overtime.pdf
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