NEW ORLEANS — In the scramble to fill parade security gaps during the 2023 Carnival season, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office overpaid its deputies an estimated $260,000, according to an audit by the city’s Office of Inspector General.
In its 47-page report released Tuesday, the IG’s office states that Sheriff Susan Hutson went far beyond federal pay guidelines by using a special “premium” rate for deputies who worked the parades, then improperly added overtime to that flat rate.
The IG’s office said the deputies would have been allowed to get their regular pay plus overtime or the premium rate, but not both.
“OPSO used premium rate supplemental Mardi Gras coverage pay to calculate the regular rate used to determine overtime pay, resulting in a projected overtime overpayment of $259,758,” a summary of the report states.
The bump in pay resulted in some deputies making more than their New Orleans police counterparts, Inspector General Ed Michel said. The NOPD has a nationally recognized track record of Carnival parade security but found themselves short-handed due to its depleted ranks during the same season that parades returned to their full pre-pandemic routes.
The report lists several other problems with OPSO’s parade participation, including improper “holiday pay” adding up to $21,407 on the days before the actual Mardi Gras holiday, lack of documentation for the details, deputies exceeding 15-hour days, and some deputies working the detail while on leave from their regular jobs.
All of that is on top of the controversy uncovered by WWL Louisiana that OPSO paid for expensive hotel rooms for eight nights for 13 top employees but left many of those rooms empty and unused.
That boondoggle helped trigger the firing of four top sheriff’s executives, including the CFO, chief counsel, and two other chief deputies. In a subsequent report, the IG’s office calculated that more than half the rooms went unused, wasting more than $18,000 in public money.
In its response to Tuesday’s IG report, the sheriff’s office disputed that it overpaid its deputies, citing a “conversation” with a U.S. Department of Labor official that the extra pay was justifiable.
“OIG’s (finding) is a legal conclusion, that is arguably wrong,” the Sheriff’s Chief of Staff John Williams wrote in a response attached to the IG’s report. “OIG and OPSO’s legal counsel had numerous conversations…and ‘agreed to disagree’ regarding requirements of federal law.”
However, the sheriff conceded that the $21,407 in “holiday pay” was a mistake, responding that “this problem occurred as a result of a glitch in our payroll system.” The sheriff noted that “we took remedial measures for Mardi Gras 2024 to assure that this type of error would not happen and will never happen again.”
Hutson and her office largely agreed with the other OIG findings and wrote that most problems have been corrected.
The OPSO response states, “Mardi Gras 2023, like all Carnival seasons, was wild and unpredictable. This is exacerbated for the men and women working to keep the public safe…Numerous lessons have been learned that better equip OPSO and our workforce to perform at higher levels than we have in past instances.”
The report notes that after the numerous controversies swirling around deputies’ pay for Carnival 2023, the sheriff’s agreement with the city for 2024 matched the method used by NOPD and set a flat pay rate for deputies.
“It will also ensure the City’s limited resources are used effectively and efficiently,” the IG’s report concluded, “providing pay equity for all law enforcement personnel providing for the City’s safety during Carnival celebrations.”
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