Trying to fix Salt Lake County's latest financial misstep, leaders have reined in overtime pay for fleet employees following allegations of abuse of the system to boost worker salaries.

A 2004 payroll obtained by The Deseret Morning News reveals that several fleet employees bolstered their annual salaries with roughly $14,000 a year, and one supervisor tacked on an additional $22,204 in overtime pay to his $54,770 salary. That figure translates to 543 hours of extra work, or the equivalent of 67 work days.

In all, overtime in the fleet department added up to about $211,593, about 10 percent of the total $2 million payroll.

"When I saw the total I almost passed out," public works director John Patterson said. "Overtime is almost a luxury, so to see the kind of dollars being spent on it caused me to wonder about the staffing and our management."

Although Patterson said that total figure is not out of sync with overtime in other public works departments like sanitation, several fleet managers and supervisors were making more than triple the amount of overtime of their employees.

That scenario didn't match up with other divisions, Patterson said, and sent up a red flag in that the people approving overtime pay were also the major beneficiaries. Though some of the overtime may be legitimate, Patterson said the high numbers signaled some supervisors may be claiming overtime in an "unjustified fashion."

Some of the largest amounts of overtime were paid to supervisors like parts room manager Jackie Stephensen, maintenance supervisor Craig Boswell and truck shop supervisor Steven Contratto. Those three managers — who each received at least $13,000 in overtime last year — were able to basically approve their own overtime with little oversight, Patterson said.

Now, he said, no overtime is allowed unless it is authorized by assistant public works director Jason Godfrey, and there must be a justified reason for overtime work that cannot be done via a schedule shift or by other staffers.

The exceptionally high number of hours also did not mesh with the fact that Patterson is getting ready to cut about a dozen positions from the fleet because it is overstaffed.

"When the overtime in fleet was discontinued, there was no decrease in the service levels provided to the user agencies, so it's rather difficult for me to understand why there was so much overtime," Patterson said.

But former fleet director Nick Morgan, who recently announced his retirement after being put on administrative leave, said all of the overtime hours he approved for fleet personnel were legitimate.

Morgan said heavy duty shop supervisor Boyd Burnham, who received the largest chunk of the fleet's overtime pay with $22,204, had to fill in on the shop floor after one mechanic had a heart attack and another injured his shoulder. Other supervisors also had to pitch in to make up for being shorthanded and for extra demands during the winter months, Morgan said.