By Liam Migdail-Smith
Reading Eagle
READING, Pa. — Overtime is a reality of police work.
The officer who makes the arrest or writes the ticket is the one who has to show up for court, whether or not the hearing coincides with his or her shift. A 9-1-1 call toward the end of an officer’s shift means going home will have to wait. Investigations that are started need to be finished.
And — in departments that offer around-the-clock service — shifts need to be staffed regardless of vacations, illnesses and holidays.
At question in the debate over the future of police pensions: How much should that overtime affect retirement?
A recent Reading Eagle analysis of municipal compensation found overtime makes up a large chunk of police pay. Among suburban officers, who dominated the list of six-figure earners, overtime tabs of $10,000 to $30,000 were the norm.
That’s a concern for municipal officials as they try to address pension spiking, which happens when officers boost their lifetime pension benefits by working large amounts of overtime in their final years on the job.
State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has called for the amount of overtime counted toward pensions to be capped at 10 percent of base pay.
It makes sense to count some overtime because it’s part of officers’ jobs, he said. But, he said, there need to be barriers to stop overtime from being used as a tool to boost pensions.
“In the last three years when they add a bunch of desk overtime just to bump up their pension, that to me is not fair to calculate into the pension,” DePasquale said during a recent Berks visit.
A proposal backed by municipal and business groups also calls for a 10 percent cap. A plan backed by the state Fraternal Order of Police proposes a 30 percent cap.
Some municipalities already have their own rules. Reading, for example, doesn’t count overtime in police pensions.
Police chiefs say that while they take steps to limit overtime, hiring more officers usually isn’t the answer because the most common types of overtime — that related to court hearings and investigations - will happen regardless of how many officers are on staff.
There’s also some disagreement over how much spiking occurs.
A review of overtime paid by a handful of the larger Berks departments last year did not find a direct correlation between seniority and overtime.
But there were some cases in which senior officers were among the top overtime earners. In some cases, those officers held specialized positions that tend to come with more overtime, such as sergeant or criminal investigator.
Police advocates argue that because pay usually is averaged over three to five years for pension calculations, one-year spikes in overtime are smoothed.
And chances are if an officer’s working a lot of overtime over several consecutive years, that’s not new behavior, said Joseph M. Brown, a West Reading police detective and Berks Fraternal Order of Police president.
“That’s reflective of what they’ve probably done their whole career,” he said.
And, Brown added, officers don’t have much control over how much overtime is available to them.
“The guy can’t just arbitrarily say: ‘I want to work all this overtime because I want to increase my pension,’” he said. “The work has to be there.”
In many cases, such as court hearings and investigations, circumstances drive which officers get the overtime. Policies for distributing non-specific overtime vary. Some police contracts specify that overtime must be offered evenly or on a rotation. Others leave it up to the chief.
In Wyomissing, for example, open overtime assignments are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. The effect on pensions is not a factor, Chief Jeffrey R. Biehl said.
“We don’t even look at that,” he said. “Number one, I need a shift covered.”
The department tries to limit overtime whenever possible by adjusting shifts and planning ahead, he said.
Sometimes officers work overtime providing contracted services such as providing a police presence at a sporting event or the Berkshire Mall. But in those cases, he said, the borough makes money because it’s reimbursed for the officers’ pay and then some.
“Overtime is not the candy store,” Biehl said. “We’re stingy with it as much as we can be. It’s not handed out willy nilly.”
Copyright 2015 the Reading Eagle