A look at rising overtime costs

Plus a ferry update and some recommended reading

Between the budget crunch here at home and cuts from The Other Washington, we want to take a look at one of the state’s less appreciated costs: overtime pay. It’s one of the state’s trickiest expenses to budget around and it’s going up.

From 2018 to 2024, overtime pay increased from $145M to $267M. Those extra hours fall on about three-fourths of the state’s 75,000-person workforce, but the lion’s share of those dollars went to four departments whose workers can’t often telecommute: The Departments of Social and Health Services, Corrections, Transportation, and the Washington State Patrol.

Generally, there isn’t an “overtime” appropriation in the state’s budget as the folks at the Office of Financial Management put it. Meaning? We don’t separately fund overtime payments in general. Managing overtime costs is up to individual agencies which have to weigh the various costs of not having its people work that overtime.