(Sacramento Bee) California parks officials apparently used obscure payroll codes intended for wildfires and disasters such as Hurricane Katrina to turn vacation time into overtime pay for managers, the state controller’s office testified Wednesday.
The state payroll system generally blocks managers from receiving overtime, said John Hiber, the state controller’s chief operating officer, at a Senate oversight hearing. But override codes exist for rare cases such as Department of Forestry and Fire Protection employees fighting wildfires or emergency workers providing disaster relief.
“It appears that because those codes exist that this wasn’t picked up (and) that those codes were manipulated to allow this to occur,” Hiber testified.
“Someone knew what he or she was doing,” observed Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.
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