San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors today voted 9-2 to approve the police department’s request for $61 million in additional overtime funding for this year, but also chastised the department for coming to the board, as it has for years now, with a hefty, unexpected bill.
“I’m not proud of this vote,” said District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who was appointed to his position directly from the role as head of public relations at the police department. “I don’t think the city should ever be in a situation that requires this much overtime from our public safety agencies.”
In the same vote, the city also approved $30 million in anticipated overtime funding for the sheriff’s department.
The vote comes as San Francisco faces a $818 million budget shortfall, which will require significant cuts to other city services. “I strongly urge the department to immediately prioritize getting things in order and doing your fair share to help us close our budget deficit,” said District 11 Supervisor Chyanne Chen, pointedly.
Almost all of the funds for those two overtime requests will be covered with unused money within the current sheriff and police budgets from salaries and mandatory fringe benefits. The city will have to cough up almost $5.5 million from its general fund to cover the rest.
In December, a city audit found that the police department has massively increased the amount of money it spends on overtime pay from fiscal year 2018-19 to fiscal year 2022-23. The department has repeatedly said overtime has gone up because the department is understaffed; it’s short about 500 officers from the recommended level in the city charter, which is just over 2,000.
That same audit, however, found troublesome signs of possible overtime fraud. Just a handful of officers, about 12 percent, accounted for almost a third of overtime hours, and record-keeping around how that overtime was approved was poor, the audit found.
That audit sparked a hearing last week in the city’s budget and appropriations committee, in which supervisors lambasted Assistant Chief David Lazar, as they did again today.
How so few officers managed to work so many hours was an issue District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton drilled down on at today’s meeting.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco’s Department of Human Resources loosened rules around how many overtime hours officers could work. Under the police union’s current contract, officers are ostensibly prohibited from working private security — so-called “10(b)” overtime — if they have taken a certain number of sick hours.
The rules are meant to reduce situations where officers call out sick and then work shifts as security guards the same day, which the audit found was common, despite the fact that these private security jobs are brokered through official SFPD channels.
The SFPD is apparently still waiving those rules about sick days and private security work. When asked during today’s meeting whether the HR department told the police department it could continue operating under those loosened rules, a representative from DHR said the rules had not been waived in the last fiscal year.
But during the meeting, after questioning from Walton, Lazar seemed to say that the department had kept waiving those rules anyway.
“Really, what happened is we never went back to the way we had it,” Lazar said.
Walton was one of two supervisors who voted against allocating overtime pay for the police department. District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder was the second.
“All of our city departments, all of our nonprofits, we tell them that they need to give us a budget, present it and stick to it,” Walton said. “And we try to hold everybody accountable but this department.”
Business as usual with new Mayor Lurie, who campaigned on anti corruption and transparency at City Hall). So did newbie supervisors Mahmood and Sauter. If this is what they meant by “collaboration” , SF taxpayers are NOT impressed. SFPD broke their own protocol and rules……for +5 years. Shame.
Serious, genuine question: what would have happened if board of supes had voted this down?
Billionaires would fund either a recall or opponents at their re-elect accusing them of being soft on crime.
I see what you mean, but I meant what would happen with the police department.
They might actually crack down on overtime. /s
They don’t have the votes. Too many right wingers on the BoS since billionaires bought it.
Then they don’t schedule overtime. Also, the union probably goes to Lurie, who can act unilaterally in appropriating up to $25m, and presumably do as much multiple times. There are vindictive moves that could be implemented as well, per example promoting a destructive narrative or slacking off.
Ms. Fielder making D9 proud. I wrote her email to thank her.
I don’t know how feasible it would be to find out, but it would be interesting to see the overtime costs associated with the 16th st crackdown. ML reported two vans contatining some number of sheriff deputies were dropped a week or so ago, which is hard to imagine was not overtime, or was a one-off.
I remember reading about Breed’s photo-op sweeps costing somewhere around a half million to a million each time. I forget where. The 16th street vaudeville act has got to be orders of magnitude more expensive for similar temporary benefit.
Now that we know Supervisors Walton & Fielder were the two who voted no, it’s safe to say that SF voters can, and should, vote out Sauter, Sherrill, Mahmood, Chen, Engardio and Dorsey when their term is up.
Myrna and Connie are already termed-out (THANK GOD!), so it’s a win-win for everyone in 2027/2028. SF voters have to stop re-electing idiots to the BOS, especially ones who would approve such an egregious amount of money during an $800 million deficit.