[StBernard] Salaried parish workers given overtime

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez has authorized paying
nearly $90,000 in overtime to a group of salaried administrators for work
done after the Parish Council in December voted to stop paying overtime to
such employees, parish records show. 
 
The payments, which included more than $26,000 for the parish's purchasing
agent and checks of more than $5,000 for another six employees, have some
council members echoing their criticism earlier this year of the parish's
overtime expenses immediately after Hurricane Katrina, which are already the
subject of a wide-ranging federal investigation. 
 
"I thought we took the position that we weren't going to give out any
overtime unless it was absolutely necessary," said Councilman Mark Madary,
who said such expenditures are part of the reason why a divided council this
week shot down a proposal by Rodriguez to borrow additional federal money to
cover parish expenses. 
 
The borrowing of more money failed because I think we don't have a grip on
how the other monies were spent," Madary said. 
Aide: 'It was justified' 
 
Rodriguez was unavailable for comment Thursday. His acting chief
administrative officer, Dave Peralta, said the administration knowingly went
against the council's wishes because Rodriguez thought the right thing to do
was to pay employees who have put in long workweeks and extraordinary
efforts to foster the parish's recovery. 
"We felt like those were the hours they worked and it was justified in
paying them," Peralta said. 
 
According to parish records and Peralta, Rodriguez on May 4 authorized
retroactive payments totaling $87,284 to 14 salaried employees for overtime
worked since Jan. 1. The payments ranged from $169 to the $26,276, records
show. 
 
Rodriguez's authorization contradicted the text of a motion unanimously
approved by the council Dec. 20 to end overtime for salaried employees by
Dec. 31. 
Councilman Craig Taffaro, who proposed the motion, said Thursday that he was
unsure what the council's exact intentions were then.
 
"We said that overtime had to be only on an as-needed basis," Taffaro said.
"We wanted overtime being stopped as wholesale overtime. But we said that in
certain cases, each department had to make a decision on how they thought
they had to pay their departments on overtime." But according to the
parish's official record of the meeting, the motion said that effective Jan.
1, "all salaried employees revert back to straight salary and any
non-salaried employee will continue to work overtime only as directed by the
department director." 
 
Peralta acknowledged that administrators knew the council would not have
approved the retroactive overtime payments. But he said the council's move
was done through a resolution, which under the Parish Charter doesn't carry
the force of law; only an ordinance does. 
 
The payments, he said, were "against the council's wishes. . . . It wasn't
an ordinance." 
 
'A disgrace,' Dean says 
 
But Council Chairman Lynn Dean called the overtime payments "a disgrace,"
especially when administrators keep asking the council to borrow millions in
federal money to cope with declining tax revenue since Katrina. This week in
a 3-3 vote, Dean and two other council members refused to let the parish
borrow $10 million in federal community disaster loans, saying a previous
$8.9 million loan was eaten up by excessive overtime spending. 
 
"I think all this overtime is a corrupt deal and should not be taking
place," Dean said. "We told them not to do it. But it's a little deal where
they can say, 'Hey man, we have a lot of money flowing through here, so we
can spend it.' "
 
The parish has faced criticism about overtime expenses since April, when
news broke about a broad federal investigation examining St. Bernard's
expenses on overtime and its contracts for debris pickup, temporary
trailers, and the removal of hazardous waste and sewage. 
 
Parish payroll records show that between Aug. 29 and late March, St. Bernard
spent $3.4 million on overtime wages, with the payouts in the period
immediately after the storm reaching up to 40 times the prestorm rate.
Overall, 48 employees, including several salaried parish administrators,
netted at least $20,000 in overtime in the four months after the hurricane,
according to parish documents. 
 
Those figures do not include the more than $87,000 that Rodriguez approved
in the latest overtime payments. But the list of recipients this time
includes some familiar names, chiefly among them longtime purchasing agent
Kathleen Bayham. She was paid overtime for her work last year, and adding
her recent payment, Bayham has been paid more than $60,700 in overtime for
work completed since the storm, records show. 
 
'Duties of three people' 
 
Peralta said Bayham has been working two additional jobs since the storm,
managing the placement and maintenance of the hundreds of trailers housing
government employees as well as the operations at the St. Bernard Civic
Center, where food and clothing are being distributed to local residents. 
 
"She is performing what would normally be the duties of three people,"
Peralta said. 
 
Bayham said she also manages custodial crews at the Civic Center and the
Parish Courthouse. She said her annual salary is $45,000 and that last year
she earned $80,000, including salary and overtime. Parish records, however,
show that Bayham made more than $93,000.
 
She said her work since the storm has included receiving FEMA trailers and
placing residents in them at all hours of the night. 
 
"I've worked more hours than anyone else in government. I've worked all
night placing people in trailers," she said. 
 
She also said parish employees who evacuated before and after the storm
received their pay and that she earned the overtime because she stayed and
worked. 
 
Peralta said he also worked overtime as a salaried administrator in the
Community Development Department during most of the time covered by
Rodriguez's May 4 order, but that he declined to take any of the retroactive
overtime. He did not explain why. 
Councilwoman Judy Hoffmeister said it was wrong for Rodriguez to ignore the
council's publicly stated wishes. 
 
"Obviously nobody paid any attention to the council," she said. "As usual
the wishes of the council are not valued or respected and are discounted. As
I said at the last meeting, we're in the way. Why am I spending my time and
energy? To be ignored? It's just unbelievable."