- Thomas DiNapoli
ALBANY – New York’s state employees are on track to break the record for annual overtime, with more than $337 million booked so far.
That’s according to a report released Wednesday by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who also projected that more than $700 million in overtime will be paid out by the end of 2015.
The report also said that this year’s overtime costs would be hitting a new record even without the unexpected cost of June’s prison break from the Clinton Correctional Facility.
The comptroller’s office noted that overtime costs have been rising since 2010. For the five-year period ending in 2014, those earnings were up nearly 50 percent even as the total number of state agency employees declined by more than 8 percent to 251,829.
A spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it’s more economical to offer the extra hours than it would be to hire more people. By offering overtime, state agencies can avoid hiring more people, which brings on extra costs including health care insurance and pension obligations.
Leave a Reply