Anchorage Daily News

A handful of Anchorage Fire Department employees received "significant overpayments" in 2007 because the department misreported the number of hours the workers were actually on the job, according to a new audit of city payrolls.

The report, written by the city internal audit department and scheduled to go before the Anchorage Assembly tonight, reviewed how six city departments pay their employees.

Auditors reported several weaknesses. First, five fire department employees were being paid for 56 hours of work a week when they were working only 40 hours, the audit said. The total excess pay was $151,140, or about $30,000 each, the audit said.

The employees were moved into different management jobs as part of a fire department reorganization before the city budget office signed off on the change, the audit said.

Fire Chief Craig Goodrich said the workers were not overpaid.

"If anything they were undercompensated," he said.

On Monday, city officials acknowledged the inaccuracies but said they were meant only as a stopgap until the Office of Management and Budget could approve the reorganization and the records could be corrected.

To pay people what they were owed in their new jobs, said city manager Mike Abbott, "we manipulated the payroll system in such a way that it paid people correctly -- even though the records were incorrect."

Though it took months longer than expected, the department's reorganization has since been approved and the payroll records corrected, Goodrich said.

He took responsibility for the inaccurate reporting.

"I'm the captain of that ship, and I made the decision to do this," Goodrich said.

But chief financial officer Sharon Weddleton looked to share the blame, saying that she oversees the budget office, which took too long to approve the fire department's reorganization.

"The objective was a good objective, to make the department stronger and a better-run organization," Weddleton said. "We cut a corner to achieve the objective, but no one lined their pocket as a result of this."

Weddleton said that in her opinion the five employees were not overpaid, so they will not have to pay back any money.

The audit reviewed payroll records for the fire, police and employee relations departments, as well as the Port of Anchorage, the street maintenance division and Solid Waste Services.

STANDBY PAY

Auditors questioned the amount of money the city pays various employees to be on standby in case they need to be called in to work. Thirteen employees were paid a total of $122,291 in standby pay in 2007 but were never called in, the audit said. The standby pay ranged from $2,171 to $21,971 for these workers. The auditor added that eight of the 13 also received standby pay in the previous two years without ever being called in to work. The audit did not say what kind of jobs they had.

Weddleton said the city would be looking to reduce such standby pay in the future.

Auditors also wrote that the police department's payroll process lacked "basic internal controls" to prevent payroll errors. The police department replied that employees are quick to flag payroll mistakes and that checks are made to prevent the majority of errors, particular those that would lead to big under- or overpayments to employees.

Find Kyle Hopkins' political blog online at adn.com/alaskapolitics or call him at 257-4334.

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