Your daily adult tube feed all in one place!
REVEALED: The West Coast city where firefighters earn more than $800K
It's no secret that public sector workers get big pay bumps by working overtime.
But a new probe has lifted the lid on the most lucrative US city to don overalls and get your hands dirty.
Los Angeles is so understaffed that some employees triple their earnings through excessive overtime shifts, says OpenTheBooks.com, which tracks public spending.
Leading the pack in the second-biggest US city is fire captain Jason Getchius, who took home a staggering $823,000 last year.
Getchius boosted his $177,000-a-year salary with $614,000 from overtime and benefits of $30,000, says the watchdog's researcher Jeremy Portnoy.
LA fire captain Jason Getchius had a salary of $177,000 in 2023, the latest figures provided by the city. But by racking up $614,000 in overtime pay, he was able to earn an eye-popping total of $823,000
Frontline workers in California - including police officers, firefighters, linemen and utility workers - have earned several million dollars since 2019
Getchius is among 20 LA employees who made more than $300,000 in overtime last year.
Nine of them work for the fire department and ten work at the Department of Water and Power.
'Los Angeles pays some of the highest salaries of any US city without factoring in overtime,' says Portnoy.
'When employees earn salary at a higher rate, taxpayers lose out on even more savings.'
LA pays overtime at 1.5 times an employee's normal salary when they work more than eight hours in a day, usually because of staffing shortages, says the report.
Last year, 945 city employees earning more than $20,000 made more from overtime than from their base salary.
Among them were 143 who made more from overtime pay than the total $221,743 salary package of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The overspend of taxpayer's money is a symptom of the hiring crisis in LA and California more widely, says Portnoy.
The city's job vacancy rate mushroomed from 11 percent before the pandemic to 17.5 percent at the end of 2023 – nearly 10,000 unfilled positions.
Vacancy rates at some city departments are as high as 32 percent.
Staffers like Getchius have stepped up to fill the gaps and ensure that emergency calls are answered — but at a staggering cost.
LA has been struggling since 2020, when more than 2,000 workers retired under a pandemic-era scheme to trim budgets.
Managers there also face lots of red tape when it comes to hiring staff.
But the problem spreads far beyond the city of 3.8 million people.
Across California, police officers, firefighters, linemen, and utility workers have been earning eye-watering sums in overtime each year.
In San Francisco, sheriff's lieutenant Ronald Terry had a salary of $179,676.
But thanks to $374,503 in overtime pay, he earned a total of $738,432 in 2022.
Lington Gordon, an electric crew foreman in Santa Clara, made $703,621 with $363,013 overtime, and Oakland police sergeant Timothy Dolan earned $699,345 with $376,998 overtime.
Los Angeles firefighters risk their lives tackling blazes — but with overtime, the job offers a great payout
Lington Gordon, an electric crew foreman in Santa Clara, made $703,621 with $363,013 overtime
The figures come from the OpenTheBooks.com, the California State Controller and the charity Transparency California, which compiles salary data on State workers.
Short staffing, poor planning, generous union deals and expensive hiring costs all contribute to public sector workers relying heavily on overtime, experts told DailyMail.com.
Debora Allen, an accountant and board director of the Bay Area's public train system BART, said that the blame lies with local government agency chiefs
It has given frontline workers a golden opportunity to earn several million dollars since 2019. But tax watchdogs say it is a raw deal for the taxpayer.
Experts say the workers have not done anything wrong, and are merely maximizing their income from local government bosses who have failed to hire enough people.
Debora Allen, an accountant and board director of the Bay Area's public train system BART, said that the blame lies with local government agency chiefs.
'People want to beat up a firefighter or police officer for legally working the hours they're allowed to work and maximizing their pay and benefits,' says Allen.
'But as long as they're doing it legally, we shouldn't be blaming them.'
She called it a 'failure of management to properly negotiate these contracts, and poor planning.'
Overtime for California government workers has surged since 2019, according to Transparent California figures.
On a per-worker basis, overtime pay is up 34 percent from 2019 to 2022 – almost doubling the inflation rate of 18.2 percent over the same period.
In the past decade, overtime has more than doubled from $4.3 billion to $8.8 billion.
Overtime per worker since 2013 is up 80.5 percent, while prices rose 37.5 percent over that period.
Ten employees of LA's Department of Water and Power took home more than $300,000 in overtime last year.
Oakland police sergeant Timothy Dolan earned $699,345 with $376,998 overtime. Since 2019, Dolan has earned almost $2.3 million and Gordon $2,231,958
'Overtime is out of control,' said Transparent California research director Todd Maddison.
'No private organization would allow their management to run their operation on so much overtime.
He added: 'It makes far more sense to simply use the money you'd pay on overtime to hire more employees. But that wouldn't produce larger paychecks for existing employees.'
For some cities, like Rialto, east of Los Angeles, one in every four dollars spent on wages went to overtime pay – a situation Allen described as 'egregious'.
The cities of La Verne and West Covina were not far behind, with one in five wage dollars paid in overtime.
Rialto city treasurer said that his administration had to pay 'some considerable overtime' due to 'shortage of personnel', especially for public safety officers such as firefighters and police.
But the city has not been able to fix the problem in years. Rialto's overtime pay steadily rose from 20.4 percent of its total wage budget in 2019 to 23.7 percent three years later.
Among the top overtime payouts in Rialto in 2022, around $3.5 million were for police jobs and $6.8million were for fire department or emergency medical staff, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of California State Controller figures.
Across the state, more than 7,100 taxpayer-funded workers earned at least $100,000 in overtime in 2022, the Controller's records show.
California counties, cities, state-level departments and special districts spent a combined $7.7billion on overtime in 2022, or 8.3 percent of their total wage bill.
Although most overtime claims are legitimate, some taxpayer-funded workers have been caught out in fraudulent schemes in recent years.
In 2023 LA police officer Isabel Morales, 32, falsely claimed overtime pay 70 times to appear at a trial that had already ended, according to the county's District Attorney, and is charged with fraudulently collecting more than $15,000.
LA Unified School District launched a probe into a group of staff who collected a combined more than $750,000 extra pay over three years.
At least 10 employees were demoted, reassigned or left following the probe, the LA Times reported in September last year.