overtime pay

mobile newsroom learned complaints came into the dona ana county tip line alleging sheriff’s employees are committing overtime fraud. reporter jamie warren investigates in a story you’ll see only on abc-7. :16 “it was kvia that brought this to my attention why didn’t hr or the county manager bring this to my attention back in february?” dona ana county sheriff ki vigil says he was caught by surprise. anonymous callers –through the county’s fraud and abuse hotline– claim two veteran employees are racking up loads of questionable overtime– at taxpayers expense. one of them, community outreach deputy michelle ugalde, is behind programs like the neighborhood watch, citizen’s academy and the special olympics torch run. abc-7 obtained the complaint claiming ugalde is being “paid a inordinate amount of money for compensation for over-time hours that may or may not be worked” another claim — saying ugalde quote “hasn’t been see in the building for three weeks” tipsters also alleging detective ken roberts, assigned to the white collar crime unit, works long hours of his choosing– not authorized in advance. an anonymous caller claims that while attending training, roberts was quote “getting overtime, when norma training is 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.” i combed throug hundreds of timesheets for roberts and ugalde –from 2014 to june of this year. the documents show ugalde consistently works overtime. in august 2015, she worked 13 days straight. october: 7 days in a row… november: 9 days straight. from december 29 2014 to december 25 2015… ugalde logged an average of 119 hours every two weeks. after 86 hours deputies get time and a half. which means she earned roughly an extra 12 hundred dollars every pay period, over 32 thousand dollars a year in overtime. 1:05 “have you worked all thos hours? yes i have. ugalde just earned national recognition for her work to educate kids about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. she gave me this list of tasks she says she’s had to take on since the community outreach program got slashed from 17 deputies to 2 in 2008. she says she’s asked deputies for help, but volunteers can be hard to find. 7:54 could you understand how that might look like a little much? i think to people who don’t know what my job is and don’t know what it entails to take the community the size of dona ana county detective roberts timesheets show –during 2015– he logged an average of 109 hours every 2 weeks. he did not accept our invitation for an on camera interview. vigil admits roberts got overtime while attending polygraph school. but says he also attended a separate training with the state of new mexico. 13:16 this was traing at required state traing he had to get out because he was not present here at the office. he was out of town and he had to get that out of the way. a sheriff’s department spokeswoman says sheriff vigil is in charge of approving overtime for uglade and roberts. but he says if there was any question of fraud, the county’s finance department should have caught it. 9:18 “our staff work overtime o a daily basis. if i was to do that itd be consuming all my time” vigil asks why the county didn’t tell him about the complaints. county manager julia brown wouldn’t sit down for an interview but on a statement said the county usually forwards complaints to the department head. “the exception to that –sh said– is when complaints also involve the department head. because it would be inappropriate to have them investigate or review their own behavior relative to allegations in such cases, those are not forwarded to the department concerned. county manager brown told me she could not go into specifics because the county is looking into the complaints i reached out to sheriff vigil one last time and asked if he believes community outreach is the best use for his department’s overtime budget but i have not heard back. reporting from the dona ana county sheriff’s department with our new mexico mobile newsroom, jamie warren, abc-7. republican presidential nominee donald trump has selected indiana