Purpose

To determine whether Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) employees who are dually employed at multiple correctional facilities or other State agencies are working their required hours at each job. The audit covered the period April 1, 2010 through February 6, 2013.

Background

DOCCS is responsible for the confinement and habilitation of approximately 56,000 offenders at 60 facilities across the State. As of September 1, 2012, DOCCS had 29,796 employees. To ensure adequate staffing at its facilities, DOCCS sometimes allows employees to work full-time at one facility and then work additional time at another facility (referred to as extra service), or may allow them to work various percentages of their full-time or part-time employment among multiple facilities. Employees may also work for other government agencies subject to certain restrictions and approval requirements established in law and civil service regulation.

Key Findings

• Between April 2010 and March 2012, State payroll records show 90 DOCCS employees were concurrently employed by either more than one DOCCS facility or a DOCCS facility and another government agency, earning over $20,000 from each job. We identified 12 of these employees as high risk because they reportedly worked more than 40 additional hours of extra service per pay period. Follow-up and additional testing identified three staff who violated time and attendance rules, resulting in improper payments for time not worked.
• These three cases showed a pattern of routine, improper activity such as claiming to be working in two places at the same time, not allowing sufficient commute time between the end of one shift and the beginning of the next, and simply working significantly fewer hours than reported. DOCCS' failure to enforce time and attendance requirements allowed these individuals to circumvent controls, sometimes with management's knowledge.
• We estimate the cost of these abuses to be at least $10,972. Since some of these employees may have held more than one job for many years, it is possible that costs associated with these abuses may be significantly higher.

Key Recommendations

• Take appropriate actions as warranted in the cases we identified, including recovery of salary payments, adjustment of pension credits, and assisting in any further investigation.
• Establish communication channels between facilities that utilize dually employed or extra service staff, as well as with other agencies that also employ DOCCS staff, to identify and prevent conflicts in scheduled work hours at different work locations.
• Ensure that dually employed staff are working the time for which they are being paid.
• Provide pertinent time and attendance training to dually employed staff and their supervisors, and ensure that required policies and procedures are followed.

Other Related Audit/Report of Interest

Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Metro-North Railroad: Forensic Audit of Select Payroll and Overtime Practices and Related Transactions (2010-S-60)