INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — The way overtime is calculated by the city of Independence could soon be changing. The move comes in the wake of alleged misuse of overtime within the Independence Police Department.
Right now, the city’s overtime policy is based on total hours worked, including paid time off.
For example, if you took off five days to start a week, then worked another day that same week, you would get paid overtime for that sixth day.
The city manager’s office wants to change it so that you'd need to work 40 hours before OT kicks in.
The move could save the city potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The idea comes after the KSHB 41 I-Team revealed an officer made at least $160,000 in overtime for non-police work.
Records show the officer logged 2,800 hours of overtime for painting and other construction projects at the police department and jail last year.
The city is now looking at a new overtime policy based on hours worked.
“It’s not that one is better than the other. The function is how do we deliver the programs and services that the taxpayers are paying for," Jason Grant of the International City/County Management Association said. "How do we deliver on that?"
To give you a sense of the impact with the new policy, the city provided some examples.
One shows a master police officer earning more than $48,000 from working 823.5 hours of overtime in a year. That’s under the current policy.
The new policy would trim that number down to nearly 500 overtime hours and more than $29,000 in overtime pay.
It’s a difference of $19,000 dollars for just one employee.
“When you see overtime policies shift, when cities start to look at is our overtime policy doing what we need it to do,” Grant said.
Independence studied overtime practices from 10 nearby Missouri cities including Kansas City, Lee’s Summit and Blue Springs.
Lee’s Summit was the only city that calculates overtime the same as Independence does with total hours including paid time off.
The I-Team contacted all city council members and the mayor to get their take on the proposed overtime policy. We have not heard back.
City council members will take up the idea on Tuesday.
Even if the city council approves it, the overtime policy only changes if the union agrees to it.
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