By Robert Swift
The Times-Tribune
SCRANTON, Pa. — The king of overtime in Pennsylvania state government last year was a physician whose $277,994 income — more than half from overtime — earned him more than the governor’s annual salary.
Mohammed Aslam, M.D., staff physician at Wernersville State Hospital, received $143,284 in overtime on top of his $134,710 annual base salary, according to information from the Office of Administration in response to a Right to Know Law request filed by The Sunday Times. The governor’s annual salary is set at $190,823. Gov. Tom Wolf said he is not taking any of the salary this year; former Gov. Tom Corbett took part of his governor salary.
A state Department of Human Services employee, Mr. Aslam was also the top overtime earner in 2013, when he received $151,555 in overtime.
Dr. Aslam joins nine other state workers who are part of the Pennsylvania’s $100,000-plus overtime club. Second on the list of state employees who took home more than $100,000 in overtime last year is Robert G. Yager Jr., D.O., a psychiatrist supervisor at Clark Summit State Hospital.
Dr. Yager received $140,311 in overtime last year on top of his $159,062 annual base salary.
Attempts to reach Dr. Aslam and Dr. Yager were unsuccessful.
Nine of the 10 workers earning more than $100,000 in overtime last year are physicians or psychiatrists in the Human Services department. A Human Services doctor on call nights and weekends must be available at the facility within 20 minutes after getting a call, agency spokeswoman Kathaleen Gillis said.
The tenth worker is a corrections officer at a state prison. The first names of corrections staffers and some other employees were not provided to the newspaper because of Right to Know Law provisions to protect the identity of public safety employees, said administration office spokesman Daniel Egan.
Neither the state Department of Human Services or Department of Corrections puts a limit on how much overtime an individual employee can earn in a year. By comparison, the state Department of Transportation sets a general limit of $15,000 for individual overtime, but that can be exceeded in emergencies and with approval from the secretary and a deputy secretary, said spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick. The state police do not set a firm limit on individual overtime, but work to limit it in line with contracts and agency regulations, said spokeswoman Maria Finn.