By Bill Cummings
The Hour, Norwalk, Conn.
HARTFORD, Conn. — The Connecticut Department of Correction allowed employees to remain on paid disciplinary leave more than three years longer than allowed, a new state audit found.
“DOC unnecessarily paid $834,955 in wages to employees who could have been placed on unpaid leave, terminated or returned to work,” the Connecticut Auditors of Public Accounts concluded.
The audit covered the fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
In a statement, DOC said it’s working with auditors to ensure the department complies with all rules and laws, but added employees under investigation or facing criminal charges cannot be returned to work until the matter is resolved.
“Concerning department employees placed on administrative leave for extended periods of time, the department cannot return employees to work while criminal charges remain pending and investigations are open,” DOC said.
“The agency will continue to review the cases of individuals on administrative leave, along with the facts gathered from the relevant investigations in order to bring the staff members back to work, once it has been determined there are no safety and security concerns,” the agency added. “To that end, over the past three weeks, 21 staff members who were out on administrative leave have been cleared to return to work.”
DOC added: “Moving forward, the Department of Correction is dedicated to strengthening its processes, improving oversight, and ensuring that public resources are managed efficiency.”
DOC is responsible for the care and incarceration of all state inmates and the Board of Pardons and Paroles , which includes operating 12 correctional facilities where adults and juveniles are incarcerated.
Overpaying disciplinary leave
Auditors said state regulations allow DOC employees facing criminal charges 30 days of paid leave and 15 days for investigation of non-criminal matters which could result in dismissal.
“Our review of ten employees on paid administrative leave during the audited period disclosed nine remained on leave beyond the limit by approximately 12 months to three years and six months,” auditors said. “We calculated DOC paid these employees $834,955 during the unallowed time.”
During the audited period, 128 employees received paid administrative leave, totaling 100,165 hours, auditors said.
“DOC unnecessarily paid wages to employees who could have been placed on unpaid leave, terminated, or returned to work,” auditors said. “Delays in completing investigations of these employees contributed to the overpayments.”
The finding has not been reported in previous audits.
” The Department of Correction should comply with requirements concerning employees on paid administrative leave in accordance with Section 5-240-5a of the State Regulations and bargaining unit contracts,” auditors said.
In written responses included with the audit, DOC partly agreed with the finding.
“The majority of employees on administrative leave generally fall into one of three categories: use of force, felony arrest for off-duty misconduct and undue familiarity involving contraband being brought into the facility,” DOC said.
“Often investigations and criminal charges are delayed as they involve entities our agency has no control over such as the Inspector General’s Office, the State Police and the Judicial Court System,” DOC explained. “The agency cannot return employees to work while any charges are pending and investigations are open. To do so would be a direct threat to the safety and security of our institutions.”
Lack of overtime controls
Auditors said they examined one shift of overtime earned by 16 correctional officers and supervisors within four separate facilities and found:
* Seven manual quarterly overtime sheets were not on file;
* Nine manual daily overtime sign-up sheets were not on file;
* For six shifts, it could not be determined if DOC prioritized employees with the lowest overtime hours;
* For one employee, the overtime hours recorded in ATLAS did not agree with Core-CT. This resulted in an overpayment of eight hours, totaling $438.
“We also reviewed one shift of overtime earned by ten inmate medical unit employees and noted six instances in which the overtime sign-up sheets were not on file,” auditors said.
“There is an increased risk that the department may not be assigning overtime in accordance with contractual guidelines due to incomplete overtime records,” auditors concluded. “As a result, employees could earn excessive overtime.”
The finding had previously been reported in audit reports covering the fiscal years 2010 through 2021.
” The Department of Correction should maintain overtime records as required by bargaining contracts and automated systems should accurately reflect manual records to ensure overtime is adequately documented and monitored,” auditors said. “Furthermore, the department should ensure it enters accurate employee job data.”
In its response, DOC partly agreed with the finding.
“The agency will implement corrective action to achieve policy compliance through an increased focus on centralized storage and retention of such manual logs for auditing review,” the agency noted.
Inadequate comp time documentation
A review of 171.25 hours of compensatory time earned by nine managerial and confidential employees found requests and approvals were not on file to support any of the hours earned by the employees, auditors said.
The auditors also examined seven parole officers and reviewed 13 pay periods and found:
* Six instances in which an accountability log was required; the log was not adequately approved by the employee or supervisor;
* Five of 10 instances in which a compensatory time authorization form was necessary; the form was missing a supervisor signature or date;
* One instance in which four hours recorded on the authorization form did not agree to the 7.5 on the employees’ timetable.
“We reviewed 20 employees who earned both compensatory time and overtime, totaling 9,577 hours,” auditors added. “We noted compensatory time earned for five exempt employees, totaling 891.5 hours, was incorrectly coded and paid as overtime. Additionally, thirteen employees that were not eligible to receive compensatory time earned 164 hours, instead of overtime.”
“The late approval for the compensatory time earned, incorrect overtime and compensatory time earnings, and lack of employee compensatory time plan monitoring appear to be the result of inadequate managerial oversight,” auditors said.
The finding had been previously reported in audits covering fiscal years 2010 through 2021.
” The Department of Correction should strengthen internal controls to ensure proper authorization is obtained prior to the earning of compensatory time,” auditors noted.
In its response, DOC agreed with the finding.
“Payroll and DAS Human Resources have reviewed this finding and have collaborated on improving the HR form and payroll spreadsheet used to set up employees within in CORE-CT to ensure the compensatory plans for bargaining unit or certain salary grades are set up properly,” DOC said.
“Internal DOC Payroll and DAS Human Resources are referring both the supervisor and employee to DOC Directive 2.8 the use of CN2801 compensatory time to strengthen compensatory time approvals and ensure that they adhere to any applicable bargaining unit contracts,” the agency added.
Late with inmate medication
Auditors reviewed 685 administrations of medication for 10 inmates during May 2023 and found:
* DOC administered 79 medications between one minute and seven hours and 30 minutes late. There were no medication variance reports on file for any of these instances;
* There was no justification on file for seven medications that DOC did not administer.
“The department cannot adequately monitor compliance with policy when variances in medication administration are not properly reported,” auditors said. “DOC informed us that late administration of medication was mainly due to critically low staffing levels which continued to be impacted by the pandemic.”
The finding had been previously reported in audits covering fiscal years 2018 through 2021.
” The Department of Correction should strengthen internal controls to ensure medication is administered and monitored in accordance with agency policies,” auditors said.
In its response, DOC agreed with the findings, noting the Health Services Unit dispensed over 5.4 million doses of medications in 2023.
” The Health Services Unit’s Informatics section is exploring, with our electronic health record vendor, the creation of a hard-stop or pop-up alert for the requirement of a justification of medications not administered,” DOC said.
” The Health Services Unit instituted a medication exception order that captures system-related exigent circumstances of untimely administration of medications (e.g., lockdowns, last-minute cell-side medication pass orders),” the agency said.
“Nursing services, operations, and quality improvement will develop and run routine reports for each facility on medication administration and documentation compliance for monitoring,” DOC said. " The Health Services Unit is enhancing the self-policing with a special focus on justification of delayed administration and justification for non-administered medications.”
Lack of inmate payroll documentation
Auditors pointed out DOC pays inmates $1 to $3 a day for assigned work based on their skill level and must maintain attendance reports at each facility and generate and reconcile batch reports prior to submitting for processing.
A review of 21 inmate compensation records, totaling $758, noted the following exceptions:
* Thirteen inmate compensation records were missing or incomplete;
* Supervising correctional officers did not sign the timesheet for six inmates;
* DOC did not keep six payroll batch reports on file.
” The Department of Correction should strengthen internal controls over the maintenance of inmate payroll records and the approval of inmate timesheets,” auditors said.
In its response, DOC agreed with the finding.
“Inmate Payroll implemented a new payroll process by creating a standardized payroll form to which all facilities are required to use when processing the inmates’ pay,” DOC said.
“Each form has to be signed and verified by facility payroll personnel,” DOC said. “This form is used for new hires, reassigned, and requests for back or retroactive pay for inmates. All incomplete forms or forms submitted with incorrect information are returned to the facility for review. Inmate Accounts will continue to collaborate with each facility to require attendance documentation for all requests for inmate pay.”
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