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Report: Maine State Police Racked Up Record Overtime In 2017

Robert F. Bukaty
/
Associated Press File
A state trooper is stationed across from the house of nurse Kaci Hickox in Fort Kent, Maine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014.

In the Maine Sunday Telegram this week, reporter Eric Russell looked at overtime in the Maine State Police. Looking at payroll data, he found that police staff took home more than $5.6 million in overtime last year.

That amount is both more than ever before and more concentrated among certain officers. Russell talks about his report, and why it matters, with Maine Things Considered host Nora Flaherty.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

FLAHERTY: How did you first get interested in the question of how much overtime state police are working?

RUSSELL: There have been stories in other parts of the country, particularly in bigger metropolitan police departments — in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Nashville, to name a few where police overtime has been a significant issue and has led to some calls for reform. And we get state payroll data periodically every year we request it. Oftentimes it reveals nothing and sometimes it reveals something interesting. So, we started looking through that data and did some analysis. The 30 percent increase over five years that I reported — it seems like a lot on its face, but compared to some of the other increases in other places, it's actually pretty modest. One of the things that we thought was interesting, though, was the concentration of overtime among some of the top folks. If you look at some of the people that made $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 — even $97,000, just in overtime — that was pretty staggering.

FLAHERTY: How did that play out?

RUSSELL: The top guy that I referenced in the story, Sgt. Thomas Pappas, he's based out of the Gray barracks, but he was doing a lot of extra detail with a Drug Enforcement Agency task force. It's my understanding he spent a good amount of his overtime working that detail. There wasn't one specific reason behind the overtime increases. In speaking with the state police colonel or the lieutenant colonel, and the union rep, they both said kind of the same thing, that there are multifaceted reasons for these increases. There are a lot more special detail escorts. One of the things that was pretty interesting was windmill escorts. Every time a windmill piece — and these are massive pieces of equipment — comes up the interstate and goes to Aroostook County or Piscataquis County or another place in Maine, they are required to have state police escorts. In those instances, the state police are reimbursed by the company that does the transporting. So, if you're a windmill manufacturer or a windmill operator you're paying the costs, but the state police trooper who does that detail still gets the overtime.

FLAHERTY: Who pays for all this overtime? Is it mostly the state or is it mostly outside entities?

RUSSELL: It's kind of a mix, from what I was able to determine, although I had requested a full breakdown of how much is being reimbursed and I didn't get that for publication. The lieutenant colonel said he couldn't access that information in time, so I was not able to report that. But he said a majority of that overtime is reimbursed. For example, sometimes it's a construction company that's doing some maintenance on the Turnpike. Let's say they've got a three- or four-mile stretch of reconstruction, and they might ask for a state police detail. If that is the case, that company would then reimburse state police. Same thing with the windmill escort. In other instances, where guys are filling in for their troopers or filling in for sick days or vacancies — and there have been some vacancies — that's obviously paid by taxpayers and paid by the state police budget.

FLAHERTY: So, specialty details. Also, the wage for state police has increased, so that means that overtime pay increases.

RUSSELL: Overtime is calculated at time-and-a-half, which is pretty standard. If your hourly wage goes up, the one-and-a-half-times rate is going to go up as well. Some of that is borne out, and it just costs more when your wages go up. But there have been additional hours in addition to the increase in pay, and that's reflected in some of the things I already mentioned.

FLAHERTY: Now you mentioned places like Nashville and Boston where those police forces have been criticized for how they've handled overtime. With respect to those other places how does Maine compare?

RUSSELL: The increase in Maine over the last five years, which was about 30 percent, is pretty small. I think in Detroit it was upwards of 150 percent over a five-year period. And in Chicago it was up over 270 percent — it was really significant. In those places, they were dealing with really significant shortages of police. They just couldn't fill spots, but they had to maintain a minimum presence on the streets and in their detail, so a lot of their officers were working just way beyond what is likely expected of them. In some cases — and this was not true in the reporting that I did here in Maine — there was sort of bad accounting of overtime. For instance, people might put in for 60 hours, but most supervisors didn't ask for what they did, so that led to some issues. I didn't find any of that here in Maine.

FLAHERTY: We have seen stories in the news looking at the problems that police forces in Maine are having attracting new recruits. How does this relate to this overtime pay increase, and what's at stake?

RUSSELL: It's no secret that Maine State Police and other municipal or county-level police agencies are having a hard time both recruiting and retaining employees. It's obviously hard work. It can be a lot of hours, it can be stressful work and the pay is not as good as you might think, although Maine State Police did get what some consider a long overdue pay increase two years ago. Still, it's a hard job to attract, and certainly, because they haven't been able to fill all the positions at any given time, that's going to create staffing shortages. The lieutenant colonel that I spoke with said that they've done a better job at filling those vacancies over the last couple of years. I think he said two years ago, there were 36 vacancies agencywide and that's down to 14. So, they still have some holes but they've done a better job at filling them.

FLAHERTY: If they're doing a better job at filling vacancies, and a lot of this money is reimbursed from outside companies — sure it's a little bit of an expense, but what's the problem? What are the concerns here?

RUSSELL: If you listen to the explanation from the lieutenant colonel and from the union official, they don't see this as a big problem. Some of the experts in the industry, one of whom I spoke with for this story — a woman who's a professor at John Jay College in New York, which is a criminal school — say overtime is seen as sort of a necessary evil. But when you're getting into major overtime for a handful of people, there's always the risk of safety. Safety in any job is important, but critically so with state police. You're asked to make split-second decisions. If you've been working 70 hours a week on average for many weeks, there's always that risk that your reaction time is reduced, that your judgment is limited. From everything that I heard from the folks here, they do a pretty good job managing it, but that doesn't change the fact that there are still a number of officers that are working a lot of hours.

FLAHERTY: Is there a plan for the future for budgeting for a continued increase in overtime?

RUSSELL: The lieutenant colonel that I spoke with, the top administrator for state police, said this is something that they constantly monitor. They're always watching their overtime. As requests come in for special details and additional things, they need to be mindful of taking on all of those. But they are certainly going to do what they need to do to maintain a minimum presence and to deal with what he termed "exigent circumstances." One of the examples that was used was the really big manhunt in Piscataquis County a couple of years ago that ended up being the longest and most expensive in state history. You can't plan for those things. So, they're going to do what they need to do to maintain staffing levels. But they feel like they have a pretty good handle on things and they're not they're not necessarily concerned that it's going to get worse.

FLAHERTY: Is there an increase in the need for sort of special details and these sorts of things that increase police hours?

RUSSELL: I spoke with Maine Turnpike Authority Director Peter Mills — they contract with state police to patrol the turnpike, and they also contract with those same troopers to do construction detail. If there is construction work on the turnpike, some construction companies will request assistance. They want to protect their employees, their workers, from distracted drivers, bad drivers, and they feel like if there is police presence there it makes them a little bit safer. Mills said they've gotten many more requests for assistance there, and they can't respond to all of them — they do the best that they can, but they have to make some decisions about which ones are appropriate. Those types of requests are more frequent than they used to be. I do think there are more details than we would have seen five, 10 years ago.

FLAHERTY: You report that some officers are using overtime pay to increase their pensions. Could you explain how that works and if it's a concern at all?

RUSSELL: This is something that used to be a major concern. The way pensions are calculated at the state level is they take an average of the three highest yearly salaries and base your pension off of that. So if your base salary is $60,000 but you're able to work $20,000 overtime for three consecutive years, all of a sudden your base or your salary for which pension is calculated is $80,000, not $60,000. That can make a big difference. That doesn't happen anymore, because in 1999 they passed a law to sort of cap it — they basically didn't want to throw the pension system into disarray by having these huge pensions that they couldn't plan for. It's now capped at 10 percent over a three-year period. You can work as much as you want. There are no restrictions on that. But for pension purposes you can't apply more than 10 percent beyond your base salary in that three-year period.

FLAHERTY: More broadly what are the implications of this for Mainers, both in terms of policing in our communities and also in terms of how much tax we're paying in future?

RUSSELL: I didn't get the sense that this was a major impact on taxpayers, although certainly an increase in the overtime budget does affect the bottom line. But it sounds like they've sort of prepared for this and planned for this. Certainly if they're not able to maintain adequate staffing and there are future vacancies, it's going to increase the number of overtime. If they keep getting more special detail requests than ever before and have to fill those, that's certainly going to put more strain on the system. But right now, by all accounts it seems like they're managing it pretty well, especially when you compare it to some other agencies that have really been hit hard in other parts of the country.

FLAHERTY: Are there any questions that came up during your reporting that you have not been able to answer?

RUSSELL: The only thing that I would have liked to be able to report that I didn't was the percentage for which the state is reimbursed for those overtime costs. Again, the lieutenant colonel said it was a majority, but I would have liked to be able to say if it was 51 percent or 90 percent, and I didn't get that. So, I hope to follow up on that in the coming weeks.

Nora is originally from the Boston area but has lived in Chicago, Michigan, New York City and at the northern tip of New York state. Nora began working in public radio at Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor and has been an on-air host, a reporter, a digital editor, a producer, and, when they let her, played records.