North Tonawanda, NY — COMPTROLLER: Poloncarz says sheriff’s department could save $2 million annually.

Overtime for sheriff’s deputies at the Erie County Holding Center is one of the most frequent debates swirling among county lawmakers.

The question: Whether adding more staff will quell the huge overtime costs incurred by deputies.

For County Comptroller Mark Poloncarz, the answer is yes.

Poloncarz recently released an audit of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office management of the Erie County Holding Center in 2005 which said the department could save over $2 million annually in overtime costs and over $6.3 million annually overall.

Hiring eleven more deputies and more efficient scheduling would go a long way towards fixing the overtime problem, the audit concluded.

“If an additional eleven officers were hired from the present amount employed of 388, and the Sheriff modified his current method of scheduling to the one proposed in our audit, we believe that overtime costs would be cut by over $2 million in the first year alone,” Poloncarz said in the audit.

Other findings included:

• The use of two deputies at the Alden Holding Center Annex, where would be adequate, costs the county nearly $2.1 million. The sheriff said the two deputies were required by a union contract, but no such written record could be found.

• Failing to bill inmate insurance companies for medical costs may have cost the county over $100,000 in 2005.

• No measures exist to limit the amount of overtime a deputy can receive. Forty deputies worked more than sixty-five hours a week on average in 2005.

• The average deputy works 203 days in a year. The deputies are not being scheduled to make the most efficient use of the days work.

“While there is no easy answer to eliminating or reducing overtime at the holding center, our office believes that if the Sheriff’s Department implements our suggestions, the (center) can be managed more efficiently and over $6 million can be saved annually,” Poloncarz said.