Audit of NY department says firefighters overpaid by $120,000

The report revealed that the station paid for unearned wages and leave time the last few years

August 17, 2012 05:52 AM

By Jay Tokasz
Buffalo News

LACKAWANNA, N.Y. — The cash-strapped City of Lackawanna overpaid its firefighters by more than $120,000 in wages and leave time over several years, according to a State Comptroller’s Office audit of the city Fire Department released Tuesday. The firefighters were paid an estimated $80,000 in wages for hours they never worked and $40,000 for inaccurately calculated leave time from 2007 to this year.

“I’m at a loss for words. This is an ugly report and an ugly situation, something that was happening before my taking over, and now we have to stop it from happening again,” said Mayor Geoffrey M. Szymanski, who took office in January. “This was not something I wanted to walk into, and now we have to fix it.”

The audit found that four firefighters consistently didn’t work all of the hours for which they were paid, including one firefighter who received more than $18,000 in wages for hours not worked. Names of the firefighters were not included in the audit.

In all, 28 of the department’s 45 firefighters were paid for 3,000 hours of work they did not do over the six-year period.

How did it happen?

The city’s contract with Local 3166, Lackawanna Professional Firefighters Association, allows firefighters to trade a scheduled shift with another firefighter. However, firefighters who were granted time off from a scheduled shift frequently did not work another shift to even the trade ? and the city didn’t dock their pay.

At the same time, some firefighters ended up working more hours than their required annual schedule because of the trades.

“It is unclear why one firefighter would continue to work shifts for one that does not reciprocate,” the audit noted.

Brian Butry, spokesman for State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, cited sloppy record-keeping and lax internal controls for failing to track attendance and ensure a fair system for all the firefighters in the department.

“The audit clearly shows that the city has to do more to accurately account for the time [firefighters] worked,” he said.

The contract stipulates that firefighters who don’t work their required hours in a calendar year must make up the hours within the first 60 days of the next calendar year.

But instead of working their makeup hours, many of the firefighters were getting even more compensation by putting in for overtime.

For example, one firefighter had a negative balance of 72 work hours at the end of 2010. In the first two months of 2011, he worked zero makeup hours while receiving 28 hours of overtime pay.

Fire Chief Ralph Galanti told auditors that leave time was to be subtracted from those firefighters who did not make up the required hours within the first two months of a new calendar year, and he provided auditors with contract violation letters that were given to firefighters with deficit hour balances in 2007 and 2008.

But the leave time was never actually deducted for any of the firefighters, the auditors found.

The audit also found numerous bookkeeping errors that resulted in firefighters being paid for leave time that they hadn’t actually accrued.

For example, three firefighters were paid $2,700 for not using 13 days of vacation, even though the contract does not allow for payment of unused vacation days, except at retirement.

Szymanski and Galanti did not dispute the audit’s findings, and the mayor said he was working with the fire chief to remedy the problems.

Those remedies will include eliminating paper bookkeeping by moving to Excel spreadsheets, as well as possibly installing time clocks instead of a sign-in sheet, the mayor said.

The city also will pursue any necessary legal channels to recoup tax dollars paid to firefighters who did not work the hours to earn those wages, he added.

Galanti submitted a two-page “corrective action plan” to the State Comptroller’s Buffalo Regional Office in July.

The plans calls for:

– A new policy, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, prohibiting firefighters who are deficient in required working hours going into a new year from being offered overtime opportunities until the deficit is made up.

– Discontinuing the accrual of leave time for firefighters who are injured on duty.

– The development of written policies to clarify the collective-bargaining agreement between the city and the firefighters union.