Feds: Sheriff's Office on Hook for Unpaid Overtime

The U.S. Department of Labor says the Pasco County Sheriff's Office is on the hook for over  $45,000 in unpaid overtime pay.

Why?

That’s what Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco wants clarified.

“This just seems to be like a witch hunt,” he said in a press conference Tuesday, June 25. 

According to a May 8 letter from Department of Labor Investigator Vivian Williams, an investigation found that “67 Sheriff’s Office employees were not pad $45,223.96 in premium overtime pay as required by section 207 of the Fair Labor Standards Act.”  
Nocco says the Department of Labor is making “baseless allegations.”

“We’ve never gotten any of the basis of their allegations,” Nocco said at the press conference. “We’ve received no documents about why they believe we violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. There’s no facts to support anything they’ve done.”

Williams wrote back that the Department tried to meet with the sheriff’s office several times and that she would submit the case as “a refusal to comply and refusal to pay wages."

Lindsey Moore, the sheriff’s office’s legal counsel, says the department notified the sheriff’s office in October that it was conducting a “random audit” of the agency. It requested information on the number of deputies who lived outside the county and worked a full-time schedule of 85 hours per two weeks. 

The department eventually revealed that the sheriff’s office was under investigation.

The crux of the department’s concerns was illuminated May 30, when the sheriff’s office met with the department investigators, Moore said.

When their shifts end, Pasco deputies who live more than 10 miles outside the county are required to leave their patrol cars in Pasco at approved locations. These approved locations include the homes of deputies who live in Pasco.

When those deputies who live outside of Pasco come to work for their next shift, those deputies drive their personal vehicles to their patrol cars and then drive the patrol cars to their work site.

Moore said that the department claims that those deputies who live outside Pasco are entitled to compensation for the time they spend driving their patrol cars to their patrol zone. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office currently does not provide such compensation. However, the department claims that deputies who live in Pasco are not entitled to compensation for the time they spend driving their patrol cars to their shift.

“The Department of Labor’s allegations simply don’t make sense,” Moore said.

Nocco said he’s made the information public he’s hoping to catch the ear of a Department of Labor higher-up, “who recognizes the insanity of this.”

Nocco said it’s unclear how many deputies it owes compensation for.

“When it comes to taxpayer dollars, we’re not going to hand it out,” he said. “There has to be a reason.”

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