4 January 2 - 8, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents “Everything was good on my paycheck. We’ll see how it goes moving forward,” said the third officer, who was also unable to view their paystub. “Now they’re not print- ing our vacation leave, sick leave or comp leave anymore for viewing. We have to go to the supervisors to try to find out what it is.” Communication Breakdowns T he Dallas County Commissioners Court approved the new compensa- tory time policy in August. At a Dec. 17 meeting, in which the paycheck issues occu- pied more than an hour of back-and-forth discussion, there was a palpable sense of frustration between commissioners and county officials over the matter being brought up once again. Commissioner Elba Garcia noted that she’d received complaints from “lots of em- ployees” who had been affected by the pay- roll error. She urged Bob Wilson, Dallas County’s human resources director, and Lester Lewis, director of the county’s Enter- prise Resources Planning, to provide an- swers. “What is the next step to make those em- ployees whole? There is a lot of nervousness, it’s the Christmas season,” Garcia said. “They already had problems with their Thanksgiving paycheck.” “They already are whole,” Commissioner John Wiley Price countered, stating that the employees had been compensated through compensatory time. According to Price, the onus is on supervisors to modify the payroll system’s default compensatory time setting so that employees receive monetary pay in- stead. Officers dispute this. While some told us they individually were responsible for en- suring their hours were coded as overtime pay and not compensatory time, others said their supervisors were “proactive” and took care of it for them. The officers also said that while they may have technically received a form of compen- sation as Price insists, it wasn’t the kind that can be used to purchase Thanksgiving din- ners or Christmas presents for their families. Furthermore, some officials dispute the county’s claim that the new payroll policy was communicated to them. The Observer asked the county for information regarding what employees were told about the new pol- icy, when that communication took place and whether there is documentation to prove the communication took place, but the informa- tion was not available as of publishing. Sgt. Christopher Dyer, president of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Association, told The Dallas Morning News that supervisors were not made aware of the policy change before it went into effect. “They made this change but didn’t tell anybody, so all of us are coding it the way we’ve been coding it for 24 years,” Dyer said. “You look at the fact that Dallas County, we’re one of the lowest-paid counties, so things are already bad … then you put this problem on top of that.” Thompson does not think his supervisors are the ones to blame for the missing money. He said they have been “getting a lot of flak” for the paycheck errors, but he believes that Dallas County officials are trying to scape- goat the people “who actually have our backs.” Officers did receive some level of com- munication about their paycheck balances, although emails sent on Nov. 21 and Dec. 6 and shared with the Observer do not address that the apparent error is the result of a pol- icy change. The emails do acknowledge that officers’ pay was “missing” from the pay- checks. “I just left a meeting with the payroll team and they are aware of the issue with overtime pay and actively working with the goal to have missing overtime amounts paid as quickly as possible,” an email sent by Hu- man Resources Director Wilson said. Thompson said he has not received fur- ther communication from the county since the Dec. 6 paycheck, and was not warned that his Dec. 20 check would be short. He was already skeptical that the payroll issues would be remedied anytime soon; now, he has no faith in the system at all. He was one of the hundreds of county employees who were affected by a similar payroll issue dur- ing the summer of 2023 and said it took 18 months to get his pay corrected. “To get [my pay] completely corrected took 18 months because they botched it that bad,” Thompson said. “People are saying ‘We’re not waiting 18 months to get our pay that we have already worked for again.’ So a lot of people have been complaining.” After the Dec. 6 payroll error, the Ob- server reached out to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, Commissioners Price and Garcia, and Jenkins to understand what pro- tocols were being put into place to fix offi- cers’ pay. Jenkins’ office was the only one to reply, advising us to contact the county audi- tor, who oversees payroll. Calls and emails to the auditor’s office went unanswered. More of the Same Frustration D allas County has experienced payroll woes before. In 2023, the county transitioned to the payroll manage- ment system Kronos, but a failed rollout of the system resulted in missing wages for sheriff’s deputies, correctional officers, ex- pert witnesses and attorneys. For weeks, county employees reported paychecks that were missed completely and paychecks that did not reflect overtime hours worked. County employees also said time off and sick leave accruals were incorrectly re- ported during the period, resulting in inac- curate amounts when employees attempted to record paid time off or sick days. At the time, unclear procedures for how to report missing pay caused employee frus- tration to mount. County employees were told to reach out to a payroll hotline or email account, but emails and phone calls went unanswered. The communication confusion seems to be happening again. Since Novem- ber, Thompson said he has been unable to reach the county via hotline or email. Though last year’s payroll flub was frus- trating, this year’s is insulting, he says, be- cause the missing wages hit what has been a sore spot between county officials and em- ployees for months. In the summer of 2024, an independent audit found that overtime pay at the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office exceeded $31 million in fiscal year 2024. It took just over two months for the county’s budgeted overtime amount to be met, and the total amount of overtime hours paid out over the fiscal year contributed to the county’s $40 million bud- get deficit, the audit reported. In meetings, county commissioners were left scratching their heads over reports that showed employees working 18 hour days, seven days a week. In a Dallas County Com- missioners Court meeting over the summer, Commissioner Price reacted to the overtime surplus by warning of “serial abusers” gam- ing the system. Just months after the audit, commission- ers approved implementing a $500,000 bio- metric time clock system that will require employees to scan their fingerprint to clock in and out of work. Thompson admits that officers, including himself, do work long shifts and avoid taking days off. In the pay period ahead of the Dec. 6 paycheck, he’d worked nearly 60 hours of overtime. But high overtime amounts are not evidence of widespread fraud, he said. Instead, jail understaffing and a state-man- dated officer-to-inmate ratio has resulted in officers often working past their scheduled hours so the jail can remain compliant. In 2021, dozens of Dallas County Jail offi- cers protested outside of the Frank Crowley Courthouse after staffing shortages resulted in officers working 16-hour days, multiple days in a row. The officers said they were “mandated” to work the overtime to meet state requirements. Three years later, Thompson said talks of a strike or walkout had resurfaced, calmed only by the money that began to trickle out of the county in mid-December. Although he loves his job, he has had to ask himself if the anguish and uncertainty over his pay- checks is worth it. “Dallas County has a whole lot of good officers who have been there. We’ve worked through COVID, we’ve worked through monkey pox, we’ve worked through the times where they said they were worried about Ebola coming into the nation,” Thompson said. “We’ve had officers die from COVID and everybody’s been stepping up, but stuff like this keeps happening.” ▼ THE NEW YEAR THERE’S ALWAYS NEXT YEAR WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025 DALLAS NEWS. BY KELLY DEARMORE W ell, 2024, you’re almost over. In some ways, we’re sad to see you go. But in all honesty, in many other ways, we’re happy to help you with your bags as you scoot on out the door. Elections and all they entail dominated the headlines around here in 2024. Former President Donald Trump became President- elect Donald Trump. Incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz became newly re-elected U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, and all sorts of new Dallas city charter amendments were approved by the voters. But elections and politics isn’t all we sug- gested you should keep an eye out for in 2024. We wondered just how “red” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson would get after his in- famous party-switch announcement in Sept. 2023. Turns out, he got lots more red. We were curious about what the state of repro- ductive rights would look like in 2024 after some high-profile challenges to Texas’ abor- tion ban went through the courts. Similar to how Johnson’s conservative bona fides grew only more intense in 2024, so did the GOP’s grip on abortion access. As eventful as this year has been, we have every reason to think that 2025 will be just as action- and drama-packed. Here’s what to keep an eye on in Dallas news in 2025. Help Wanted Some major 2024 happenings will impact 2025 rather mightily. Dallas is still looking to replace both former City Manager T.C. Broadnax, who announced his departure nearly a year ago, and the popular, produc- tive former police chief, Eddie Garcia, who retired from the force in September. Four fi- nalists for the city manager job were Mike Brooks Discrepancies in overtime compensation have left officers missing hundreds of dollars of overtime pay just weeks before Christmas. Unfair Park from p3 >> p6
