State Mental Health, Disability Offices Clocked the Most Overtime in 2021, Report Finds

Crain’s New York Business 

The state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities and the Office of Mental Health are two of the top three worst offenders in overtime usage in 2021, a report from the state comptroller’s office has found.

OPWDD and the mental health office, along with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, account for just 25% of the state workforce but 66% of overtime hours logged by all state agencies in the year, the report, which was released Friday, found. The cost of overtime in 2021 reached an all-time high of more than $924 million and total overtime used rose by more than 800,000 hours. Nearly double the number of workers left agencies as were hired…

…According to the comptroller’s office, most overtime was performed in agencies that have already typically relied on it, such as OPWDD and the Department of Corrections. Jean Moore, the director of the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the State University of New York at Albany, echoed that turnover rates within agencies have remained consistent with previous years, signaling that an increase in overtime usage isn’t necessarily due to more staff leaving agencies this year than normal…

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