A small number of state employees dramatically boost their annual salaries by clocking extreme amounts of overtime hours.

At least 27 state employees made more money in overtime than they did from their base salaries during the fiscal year that ended in June 2024. They did so even as the majority of the state’s 19,000 employees work no or negligible amounts of overtime.

One, Tarnue Korvah, a corporal with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, made $127,231 in overtime on top of his regular $66,206 base salary, according to data provided by the Nebraska Department of Administrative Services following a Flatwater public records request. Korvah couldn’t be reached for comment.

The 27 overtime overachievers all work in either Nebraska’s corrections system or for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

And nearly all of the DHHS employees who doubled their take-home pay through overtime are “mental health security specialists,” a position similar to correctional officers, who work at the state’s two state psychiatric hospitals, the Lincoln Regional Center and the Norfolk Regional Center.

The Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 88, represents both corrections workers and DHHS mental health security specialists in Nebraska. The union’s president, Jay Wilson, said that both roles face similar challenges with staffing.

“It takes a certain person to do the jobs we do. It’s hard to find people to come work with us,” Wilson said. “Even though the amount of starting pay is pretty good, the benefits are good, it’s hard for us to keep people.”

In 2021, the state Legislative Performance Audit Committee ordered an audit of the three state agencies that spent the most on overtime: NDCS, DHHS, and the Department of Transportation. The report, published in 2022, found that vacant jobs at facilities like the state prison in Tecumseh and psychiatric hospitals prompted much of that overtime.

Prisons and psychiatric hospitals are staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When there are vacancies and positions unfilled, current employees must take on those shifts.

Stephanie Meese, the legislative auditor, said that during the 2021 audit, her team interviewed employees working at the 24-hour facilities.

“They were always so tightly staffed that, if somebody was sick, there wasn’t a backup person in place,” Meese said. “So if anything out of the ordinary would happen, then that triggered overtime basically immediately.”

According to the FOP 88 union contract with the state, each facility maintains an overtime roster that determines how mandatory overtime is assigned. Generally, those at the top of the list will be the first chosen if mandatory overtime is required. After working mandatory overtime or volunteering for overtime, an employee’s name is then moved to the bottom of the list.

The contract also doesn’t limit the overall amount of overtime that an employee can work. With plenty of available shifts at these facilities, workers who want to work far more than 40 hours a week often can. Wilson, the union president, said that the majority of workers taking on overtime are volunteers.

“Some of them are just trying to stay out of the mandatory list, but the money’s good,” Wilson said. “If you could double your salary, I think most people would.”

Staffing these roles is a challenge that has been around for a long time. Since 2021, the Nebraska Office of Public Counsel has released an annual report on state institutions within DHHS. According to the most recent report, the Lincoln Regional Center has had 70 or more vacant positions every year since 2020. The Norfolk Regional Center also has had vacancies each year, but those numbers have been gradually decreasing since 2021.

Documentation of shortages within the Department of Correctional Services goes back even further. Nebraska news stories from 2016, 2018 and 2022 all describe high numbers of vacancies and overtime hours within the department. A 2024 report from the state auditor lists 25 corrections employees who all worked thousands of hours of overtime over the course of a year.

Mike Foley, Nebraska’s state auditor, oversaw that 2024 report on the Department of Correctional Services. He told the Flatwater Free Press that both the prison system and the DHHS have long struggled with high personnel costs relating to overtime.

“They’ve really blown a hole in the budget from these prison guards,” Foley said.

According to the annual Personnel Almanac released by the Nebraska Department of Administrative Services, Corrections and DHHS — which are also the largest two state agencies — have led all other departments in overtime expenditures for the past five years. The two departments’ overtime expenditures combined for more than $37 million in fiscal year 2024.

Wilson, the union leader, said that recently there have been efforts to reduce the amount of overtime worked in these roles, an effort he attributed to recent problems balancing the state’s budget. He said that DHHS facilities have been experimenting with new shift schedules, and that both Corrections and DHHS have lowered the minimum amount of security personnel needed at these facilities.

“It causes stress on the staff, and not only that, but (it also stresses) the incarcerated individuals for Corrections or the patients at DHHS,” Wilson said.

Dayne Urbanovsky, a spokesperson for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, said the department has implemented strategies such as targeted recruitment efforts for jobs with critical vacancies, wellness programs to support team health and defensive and de-escalation training to improve staff preparedness.

“These efforts have helped reduce overtime by stabilizing staffing levels and improving retention,” Urbanovsky wrote in an email. At the same time, he wrote, the corrections department “continues to strengthen recruitment, enhance staff support, and build long-term workforce sustainability.”

Jeff Powell, a spokesman for DHHS, said that while overtime trends had stayed steady at the Norfolk Regional Center, overtime costs at the Lincoln Regional Center had dropped significantly since Gov. Jim Pillen took office in 2023.

“The overtime reductions at LRC are the result of a focused effort to fill vacancies, strengthen staffing levels, and streamline workforce organization and overtime practices to improve efficiency,” Powell wrote in an email.

Foley, the state auditor, said that the state has tried offering signing and referral bonuses to hire more people in these roles. Dramatic pay increases in 2021 led to a spike in applications for some roles. But hiring challenges continue, and when agencies are forced to use overtime, he said, it hurts the overall goal of minimizing government expenditures.

“When you hire somebody for $60,000 or $70,000 a year, and at the end of the year they get a W-2 that says they made $125,000, there’s an issue there,” Foley said.

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/overtime-overdone-27-state-employees-doub...