Exiting Denver workers overpaid
By Daniel J. Chacon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published June 10, 2008 at 9:02 a.m.
Updated June 10, 2008 at 9:02 a.m.
Despite years of reprimands, Denver city agencies are continuing to overpay departing employees, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars annually.
Individual agencies and the city as a whole have shown a "lack of improvement" in the number of errors that are being made in the final paychecks of former employees, according to a report by Auditor Dennis Gallagher, whose office has also made mistakes.
"As I expressed in my letters to you the last three years, I am very concerned about the number of dollars associated with the audit adjustments and especially the net overpayment amounts," Gallagher wrote last month in a letter to Mayor John Hickenlooper.
"I am also discouraged by an apparent lack of progress towards reducing the number and type of errors," wrote Gallagher, who conducts "separation audits" to determine whether or not sick and vacation payouts to departing employees are correct.
Since 2003, Denver has overpaid workers who left city employment nearly $950,000 total.
During that five-year period, the city recouped more than half of the excess payouts right away, such as by collecting cash from the overpaid employees.
But about $400,000 in "net overpayments" in the last five years were sent to collections, which, according to city documents, have a 40 percent success rate.
Last year alone, the city overpaid departing employees $182,467 total.
"In the past, there are have been some fairly significant, high-profile overpayments getting up in excess of $10,000," Denis Berckefeldt, the auditor's spokesman, said Monday.
"But it can vary from a couple of hundred dollars up to a few thousand dollars in overpayment," he said.
The problem isn't just with overpayments. Some employees are getting less than they're entitled.
In 2007, the city underpaid departing employees $121,351 total. Once it finds the errors, the city makes good on underpayments.
The payroll errors are expected to taper in the future, though.
Berckefeldt said the recent centralization of the city's payroll and the implementation of a new electronic payroll system known as Kronos will increase accuracy.
"In the future, we do think that moving to the Kronos system is going to solve a lot of these problems because, for the most part, you're taking the human error factor out of" the process, he said.
"I don't think at the end of the day it's all going to go away ... but we do think that Kronos will solve a lot of the problems with regard to overpayments and underpayments," Berckefeldt added.
But Kronos won't be in full swing until later this year, so the auditor expects to see "some problems" in the first half or nine months of 2008, Berckefeldt said.
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June 10, 2008
10:08 a.m.
Suggest removal
GladysKravitz writes:
KRONOS??? Isn't that the machine used to kill all the super heroes in the "Incredibles" movie? I've got a bad feeling about this.
June 10, 2008
10:29 a.m.
Suggest removal
LingLingfor_prez writes:
Hope the auditor is not discouraged. Keep digging auditor.
June 10, 2008
10:57 a.m.
Suggest removal
Squatch writes:
Pissing money away but we need to tax everybody to add more funds to schools.
June 10, 2008
11:15 a.m.
Suggest removal
ggonzo writes:
Big Brother!!! You Gotta Love It!!! (Where's my Check????)
June 10, 2008
11:43 a.m.
Suggest removal
freedomfighter1 writes:
I worked for the city of Denver. When I quit, I was underpaid about $500. They argued with me and I got nothing.
June 10, 2008
12:40 p.m.
Suggest removal
davies writes:
Perhaps some of the employees were so bad they paid them extra to get them to quit ;-)
June 10, 2008
2:34 p.m.
Suggest removal
GladysKravitz writes:
davies...Y'KNOW SOMETHING YOU HAVE A GOOD POINT THERE..Let's start with Peter Park and his lapdog Deirdre Oss at CPD. They gave away $41,500, in fee waivers to two applicants who down zoned NW denver, with the blessing Councilman Rick Garcia and his lapdog Pat Defa...who's husband Ray Defa was the original applicant. Talk about pissing away money!!
June 10, 2008
2:41 p.m.
Suggest removal
davies writes:
GK: Zoning rules often seem to get, ahem, creative. I liked your 'Kronos' post. I knew I remembered it from somewhere too.