Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin speaks speaks to a Republican gathering in Iowa last May, two months before declaring his run for the presidency. Credit: Getty

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Madison— Taxpayers shelled out more than $577,000 to cover overtime pay that had been wrongly withheld for the security team that protects Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and visiting officials.

The payments to the security detail cover May 2013 to May 2015 — a period when Walker was increasingly traveling the nation and making international stops as he considered a run for president. The Republican governor formally launched his presidential campaign in July, but abandoned it in September when his polling numbers cratered.

The federal Department of Labor informed the state in August it had to provide back pay for the security team, but the final tally was not made public until Wednesday. Officials said the state had paid nine members of the unit $577,189 in November to cover the back pay.

That's more than $64,000 per member of the team on average. The Department of Labor and State Patrol did not break down the payments by individual.

"It's just excessive," said state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton). "Taxpayers paid for an entourage for him and it wasn't necessary. There's no excuse for it."

He called on Walker's campaign to reimburse taxpayers for overtime costs when he was doing political work, but there were no signs the governor planned to do that.

Federal law requires most workers to be paid at one and a half times their regular rate when they work more than 40 hours a week. The state had wrongly determined the security team was exempt from those regulations, the Department of Labor found.

"All workers must be paid in accordance with the law," said a statement from David King, district director for the department's Wage and Hour Division in Minneapolis.

In a statement, State Patrol spokeswoman Patty Mayers said the agency fully cooperated with the Department of Labor and has addressed all the issues it raised. She did not have details Wednesday on how much members of the security detail have been paid in overtime since May.

Soon after the State Patrol learned it owed the back pay, it rescinded $4-an-hour raises it had given to the security team and cut the size of the detail in half. Officials have not disclosed how they modified the security plan to protect Walker, his family and others with a smaller staff.

Walker has faced criticism over having taxpayers bear the costs for his security team, even when he was attending campaign fundraisers or giving political speeches. Walker's predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, also got 24-hour protection at taxpayer cost, but he had fewer political events because he was not seeking national office.

In April, Walker's political operation agreed to pay travel costs for the security team, but Walker said taxpayers would continue to pay for the troopers' salaries and benefits, including their overtime costs.

Walker's campaign and a political group he set up have paid the state $125,100 for his security team's travel costs for the first half of the year. But the state has not yet billed the campaign for costs incurred since July 1, which was just before his campaign went into high gear.

Walker's campaign had more than $1 million in debt when he ended his run, but he has pledged to raise enough money to pay off that debt.

For years, the Dignitary Protection Unit consisted of a captain, a lieutenant and eight sergeants. It September, it was reduced to a lieutenant and four sergeants. The captain position was vacant at the time and the other four sergeants on the team were reassigned to regional offices to do other work.

The new, slimmer security detail was to be augmented by other troopers — an arrangement meant to curb overtime costs. In that scenario, a larger group of officers would earn their normal pay while doing short stints on the security detail, instead of having a handful of troopers rack up large amounts of overtime.

However, overtime could still pile up when the governor travels out of state because only a small security team would travel with him. Walker is not traveling as frequently as he was during his presidential run, but he still remains involved in politics nationally, For instance, in February he is giving a keynote speech to the Hawaii Republican Party.

The method the Wisconsin State Patrol had been using to pay troopers on the security team was put in place in 2006, when Doyle was governor.

Under that system, members of the unit earned overtime when they worked more than 60 hours in a week, but that overtime was capped at $47,000 a year for the entire unit.

This February, the State Patrol granted $4 hourly raises for members of the team, but also ended their ability to claim overtime, even in rare instances.

The raises boosted base pay for most members of the team by more than 12%, from a little over $32 an hour to a little over $36 an hour.

In September, they lost that raise as part of the state's response to the Department of Labor's findings. The move reduced pay for most members of the unit to $32.36 an hour.

Members of the unit routinely put in long hours, and the team last year worked 8,200 hours that were initially uncompensated, according to the State Patrol. Members of the unit routinely worked 50 hours or more a week, with some often putting in 70 hours a week, according to the Department of Labor.