The Atlanta Police Department accounted for 43 percent of overtime pay in the fiscal year 2018, despite efforts to reduce spending, according to the latest audit. City auditor Amanda Noble said the increase was likely due to crime initiatives.

Five other city departments – fire, watershed management, public works, corrections, and aviation – accounted for an additional 55 percent of overtime pay.

The police officials say special events drive their overtime costs higher. “The City of Atlanta plays host to many major events every year that require multiple layers of security, sometimes for days at a time,” police spokesman Carlos Campos said in an emailed statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The department’s ability to pay overtime is critical to our ability to ensure public safety coverage for these planned major events – as well as unexpected or impromptu incidents, marches, and demonstrations.”

MORE|Atlanta City Council approves new task force on ethics, transparency

READ|Atlanta mayor bans salary history questions on city job applications

ALSO|Watchdogs have questions about Atlanta transparency task force

Overtime tied to special events was only the case in January 2018. At the time, Atlanta hosted its annual New Year’s Eve Peach Drop celebration, the College Football Championship game between Georgia and Alabama at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was inaugurated.

Auditors found that between fiscal years 2015 and 2017, the increase in Atlanta’s overtime spending outpaced six of its peer cities — Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Miami, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. — over the three-year period. Atlanta spent 8 percent of its personnel budget on overtime in fiscal year 2017, compared to an average of 4.8 percent among the seven cities.

“The city consistently under-budgeted and overspent compared to the peer cities,” auditors wrote. “Atlanta does not use historical spending to estimate future overtime relying instead on position vacancies to cover costs.”

Auditors also did not find a correlation between vacancies and overtime except in the fire department, which saw a 23 percent increase in overtime pay as a result of vacancies. Campos said the police department has 350 officer vacancies and has used overtime to ensure there are no gaps in public safety resulting from the vacancies.

The police department’s overtime costs were raised by “generous overtime rates” compared to those outlined in the Fair Labor Standards Act, auditors wrote. They found Atlanta pays its officers overtime after they’ve worked 160 hours in a 28-day work period as opposed to the FLSA’s 171-hour threshold.

Additionally, more than 60 percent of Atlanta police sergeants were paid overtime earnings that exceeded 15 percent of their annual base salaries. That violates a city ordinance passed in 2015 which limited overtime to no more than that amount.

“After the limit was put in place no one was monitoring it,” Noble said. “So, a lot of sergeants were making over the cap.”

Since discovering their excessive overtime spending, Atlanta police have instituted policies resulting in a 60 percent reduction of overtime pay for the department.

“We clearly understand that overtime payouts should not be viewed as a blank check written to officers,” Campos said. “We have a responsibility to ensure any overtime money is spent wisely and effectively.”

Like Intown Atlanta News Now on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter

﻿In other news: