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County officials said they are trying to bring the division's overtime costs down by hiring more employees.

Frederick County's salary costs in fiscal 2008 were $122.4 million, including $6.1 million in overtime, according to county figures. The fiscal calendar runs from July 1 to the end of June the next year.

Fire and rescue personnel took home $1.86 million in overtime that year.

Frederick County government doesn't have a uniform policy on overtime, said Mitchell Hose, the county's human resources director.

Whether a particular employee is eligible for overtime is governed by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Beyond that, it's up to each department how to control overtime for eligible employees, Hose said.

24 hours on duty

The fire division needs a set number of employees on duty at all times, said Gene Mellin, the county's director of fire and rescue services. When someone is out sick or on vacation, other personnel need to cover that shift.

"We don't have positions that we cannot fill for a day," he said. "They're all critical, or they wouldn't be there to begin with."

The county used to staff the Division of Fire and Rescue Services according to its base needs, not including extra positions to cover for people on leave, he said. As a result, when someone did take leave, someone else had to step in -- on overtime -- to cover their spot.

"When you're a firefighter, (if) you work a 24-hour shift, that could be 24 hours of overtime," Mellin said.

In 2004, the hiring policy changed to take into account the department's need to cover for absent firefighters.

For every new firefighter position the department needed to add to meet increasing demands for service, the department added an additional half position.

That allows the department to cover open shifts without incurring excessive overtime, Mellin said.

Since this has been happening as the need for fire and rescue coverage is growing, it's taken a while to close the overtime gap.

Cutting overtime costs

In fiscal 2007, the Division of Fire and Rescue Services had 275 uniformed staff and spent more than $2 million on overtime, according to County Manager Ron Hart.

In 2008, the number of staff rose to 314, while overtime fell about 9 percent to $1.86 million. Fire lieutenants, fire lieutenant instructors and fire lieutenant paramedics accounted for the lion's share of the overtime in 2008, at more than $960,000.

One fire lieutenant, Richard Hartle, took home more than $56,000 in overtime, the most of any county employee. Added to his base pay of $74,234, he made more than $130,000, making him the seventh highest-paid county employee that year.

There are 360 uniformed staff members this year. Hart projects overtime in the department will be down to about $1.1 million.

Mellin said he's pretty happy with that number, which is about 5 percent of the division's total salary costs.

A class of 28 firefighters is in the academy now, and once that group finishes its training, it will bring the department up to its approved strength, Mellin said

Because of the struggling economy, the county has no plans to expand the department further at the moment.

In local government, emergency services such as fire protection and law enforcement tend to have the highest overtime rates, said Bob Cartwright, president and CEO of Texas-based Intelligent Compensation LLC.

Overtime rates tend to ebb and flow with the economy rather than meet a set standard, he said. In this tight economy, many governments face the choice of cutting overtime, or cutting positions.

Typically, governments set their budgets, then let department heads manage them, Cartwright said. If the department heads can't do that, the elected officials either have to allow it or rein it in.

"From a business perspective," he said, "it's basically how well you're going to manage your budget."

The department is taking steps to help bring such costs down, Mellin and Hart said.

This includes having battalion chiefs, who are not eligible for overtime, fill in for fire lieutenants.

Also, the department is buying software to ensure that no more than a certain number of firefighters take leave any given day.

The county will continue to review departmental overtime as it goes through its budget process, Hart said.

Other departments

Overall, the county agencies and departments with 24-hour staffing requirements had the greatest amounts of overtime. These departments include the Frederick County Adult Detention Center, sheriff's office, emergency communications and the combined nursing staffs at Citizens Care and Rehabilitation Center and the Montevue Home.

Overtime costs at those departments ran from $353,206 at emergency communications to $799,734 at the detention center.

The sheriff's office has no magic formula for overtime, said Maj. Scot Hopkins, the sheriff's office's administrative services division commander. Like the Division of Fire and Rescue Services, the sheriff's office patrol teams have minimum staffing levels, but they don't bring people on to cover when an employee is on leave.

But the sheriff's office gets reimbursed by third parties for some of its overtime, such as time spent on grant-funded DUI patrols or town patrols, he said.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid overtime, Hopkins said. A deputy who arrests someone near the end of a shift can't just hand that person off to someone else when the shift ends.

Citizens Care and Rehabilitation Center had one employee, Phyllis Manka, who made $19,214 in overtime, more than her $16,720 in base salary.

Manka held three different positions as she was finishing her schooling, starting as a nursing assistant and ending as a full nurse, said Nicole Bohrer, the center's administrator.

In the first two positions she held, Manka received no benefits but would start accruing overtime after working more than eight hours in a day, Bohrer said.

Paying overtime is less expensive than bringing in nurses from an outside agency, so it's a necessary evil, she said.

"It's a juggling act to try and fill that (24-hour) schedule," Bohrer said.

The center has been trying to bring its overtime costs down by using as-needed nurses to cover open shifts, she said.