Authorize $62K in “not justifiable or reasonable” OT & you’re not fired?

From the News & Observer on the Durham overtime debacle in the police department:

A city audit has found at least $60,000 in overtime paid to a Durham police officer “was not justifiable or reasonable” and that lax oversight by department officials contributed to the abuse.

Deputy Chief B.J. Council, who signed off on the overtime, will retire as of Dec. 31, Police Chief Jose Lopez said this afternoon. Beginning Monday, Council will be on personal leave until the end of the year. She is a 31-year veteran of the Durham police, Lopez said.

In any place I’ve ever worked, this action would result in firing, not retirement.

What’s more, the story says the police chief knew about the overtime in April. More from the N&O (emphasis is mine):

Based on work logs, Robinson-Taylor, claimed to have worked 79 hours per week, which including working on days while on leave.

Police Chief Jose Lopez and Deputy Chief Council failed to act when notified of the excessive amount of overtime and compensatory time in April 2009. Even as late as Sept. 11, Robinson-Taylor received $3,128.44 of overtime with no daily supporting documentation for the time claimed.

The Police Department failed to monitor Robinson-Taylor’s work time.

This was an isolated case; nothing was found to indicate overtime abuse by any other city employee.
“I want to publicly apologize to the citizens of Durham,” Bonfield said. “I am personally embarrassed and embarrassed for the Police Department.” Despite this incident, Bonfield said he still has full faith and confidence in Lopez.

Huh?

Sounds like the Durham Police Department

The Federal Times says the U.S. Post Office pays thousands of its employees to sit around and do nothing:

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing.

It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.

Who’s in charge at the post office, B.J. Council and Alesha Robinson-Taylor?

Rotten management in the Durham Police Department

The overtime scandal in the Durham Police Department is peeling back layers of crud and revealing just how inept and incompetent the management of the department really is. From The Herald-Sun today:

Top-level commanders in the Durham Police Department from Police Chief Jose Lopez on down were aware of excessive overtime payments to a department desk officer but “enabled” the abuse of the city’s payroll system, auditors say.

The leader of the department’s Operations Bureau, Deputy Police Chief Beverly “B.J.” Council, personally signed off on 10 of 12 overtime claims from Officer Alesha Robinson-Taylor, who was overseeing towing and the moonlighting of her fellow officers.

Robinson-Taylor received $62,583 in overtime between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009, and also was allowed to record 904 hours of compensatory time.

If another Herald-Sun report is true, then I say good riddance:

And it is looking increasingly likely that the investigation will claim a top-ranking commander in the Police Department. Sources say the leader of its Operations Bureau, Deputy Police Chief Beverly “B.J.” Council, was relieved of her duties Tuesday.

The first experience I ever had with Council was a community meeting a month or so ago about a spate of muggings and at least one shooting in Trinity Park. I was appalled that the Police Department reps were putting all responsibility on law-abiding citizens instead of telling us what they were going to DO about the problem. We were told to not go out after dark, always walk in groups, and stay home as much as possible.

That was bad enough. But when it came Council’s time to speak, she lectured us all about the root causes that create muggers and shooters, and said we had to be understanding of the circumstances these thugs grew up in. I left that meeting fully convinced that she should not be a police officer, much less in charge of other police officers.

So now the question is: What are our city fathers going to do about all the other incompetent Police Department managers who have admitted to knowingly and willingly allowing this outrageous overtime fraud to go through? Will they do the traditional Durham hemming and hawing by setting up a blue-ribbon panel to give them cover, or will our city council members, our mayor and city manager show some backbone for once?

I can’t wait to see.

FUNNY UPDATE: Maybe it’s time to get some new stationery. The audit of the Durham Police Department that found all the unsavory things regarding the overtime scam is printed on City of Durham stationery with this printed at the bottom of every page: “Good Things are Happening in Durham”.

Which war is more important?

Ed Morrissey notes today:

* General Stanley McChrystal, 9/27/09: “I’ve talked to the President once since I’ve been on a VTC.”
* LA Times, 6/28/09, on SEIU president Andy Stern’s relationship with White House: “Stern estimates he visits the White House once a week.”

Thanks to the State, Health Care Consumers Lose

Four North Carolina health care facilities/operators want to compete to provide treatment for prostate cancer – competition that would drive down costs and stimulate innovation and research. But it won’t happen, thanks to state regulators who continue the misguided policy of intervening in the health care market. You’ll find the details in this Triangle Business Journal story.

You’ll find a concise Q&A with the John Locke Foundation’s Roy Cordato on the state’s certificate of need law (CON) here.

Ivory Tower Mentality Has UNC Faculty Acting Like Children

The Daily Tar Heel reports that some UNC faculty members “are worried” about how they’ll be impacted by recommendations to streamline the incredible bloated bureacracy identified by the Bain & Company report.

The corporate lingo in which some suggestions are delivered is a barrier to faculty members.

At a meeting Monday, faculty balked at the term “process velocity,” saying it raised red flags that were indicative of changes they might not like.

The term describes the turnaround speed at which some operations are accomplished, but it marks an uneasiness between the academic culture of the faculty and the businesslike practice of administrators, legislators and trustees.

Faculty also worry that the broader mission of the University to create the best possible environment to learn, research and serve could be lost in a rush to cut administrative costs.

Well gee, I’m so very sorry the faculty “might not like” the responsibility that comes with the privilege of spending other people’s money. As a reminder, here’s what the Bain report found at UNC:

The report found that the campus, with an annual operating budget of about $2 billion, spends more on administrative costs than it does on academics, a balance Thorp said he’d like to flip-flop.

Supervision is 10 layers deep in some areas.

The Bain report is a great first step at bringing rationality to campus administration. But now it’s time for Chancellor Thorp to tell his “worried” faculty to grow up, ditch the ivory tower mentality, and operate in the real world from which they are not exempt.

Sources To Herald-Sun: Commander Relieved of Duty Over Cop Overtime

Durham City Manager Tom Bonfield will reveal the results of the cop overtime audit today. The Herald-Sun has a preview of the results and it isn’t pretty. I encourage you to read the entire story. (emphasis is mine)

City officials today will release the results of the investigation into the Durham Police Department’s payment of at least $62,583 in overtime to an officer who was overseeing towing and her colleagues’ moonlighting.

And it is looking increasingly likely that the investigation will claim a top-ranking commander in the Police Department. Sources say the leader of its Operations Bureau, Deputy Police Chief Beverly “B.J.” Council, was relieved of her duties Tuesday.

And then there’s this (emphasis is mine):

Bonfield said he’s additionally interested in the possibility of restitution. Officials are “going to do everything we can to find out what opportunities there are to receive” it, he said.

The audit’s likely mention of the Finance Department was a new twist on Tuesday. The manager said the concern is whether that department, which processes payroll claims, should have spotted a problem and reported it up the chain of command.

The precise amount of money involved is still unclear. Bonfield it is “probably more than” the $62,583 previously reported, and said officials today would likely have “some range of numbers” to disclose.

N.C.’s best political reporters?

The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza asked his readers to name the best political reporters in their states. For North Carolina, The N&O‘s Rob Christensen and WUNC’s Laura Leslie won. That sort of tells you who reads Cillizza’s blog. Just sayin’.

What a climate change war might be like

Tim Blair imagines it:

We were pinned down beneath a bombardment of organic wholemung seed loaves when word came that reinforcements were only two kilometres away. “Just hang on,” I told Pvt Ffyona Treeangel, gasping with pain next to me in our hand-dug eco-trench/worm hatchery. “We’ll be saved. You’ll be all right. You’ll make it.” A crust fragment had left a nasty scratch right above the henna tattoo on her wrist.

LOL, as they say.

“A tax on soda is bad policy, to say the least.”

Is a soda tax on the way from the Obama administration? The student editorial board of NC State’s Technician weighs in on the possibility.

Tax and health officials seem to think the tax proposal is a sort of win-win for health care. The concept of this idea even being considered is unfathomable and establishes a very slippery slope in the realm of taxation — what’s next, ice cream?

In sincerity, this sort of tax could be applied to just about anything: candy, doughnuts or other fatty foods. Taxing soda is a very precarious step towards a federal imposition on consumer choice. Isn’t this the sort of thing the colonists were upset about when they tossed tea into Boston Harbor?