NEW ORLEANS — When Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson helped save Carnival last year – or at least help parades return to their traditional routes – she was widely cheered.
But those cheers quickly turned to questions and controversy after WWL Louisiana exposed that 13 top employees were put up in expensive hotel rooms for eight nights. That helped trigger the firing of four top sheriff's executives and, ultimately, findings that most of the rooms went unoccupied on most nights, despite costing more than $18,000 in public money.
Now, as the sheriff prepares to help again this Mardi Gras parade season, New Orleans Inspector General Ed Michel has uncovered another problem from last year.
In a three-page letter from the IG to the city CAO Gilbert Montano, the IG states that Hutson overpaid her deputies who worked Carnival security in violation of federal and state payroll and labor laws.
“OPSO’s overtime calculation for employees who signed up to work additional hours during the 2023 Carnival season was not compliant with federal law,” the IG’s letter states.
According to the IG, the sheriff’s office erred by paying deputies overtime on top of a special detail rate of $50 an hour for regular parade days and $75 an hour on Mardi Gras. According to the letter, deputies were entitled to either overtime added to their regular hours or the special rate, but not both.
“The sheriff was compensating her deputies at a rate that was in violation of the cooperative endeavor agreement, in violation of state law and in violation of federal law,” said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the non-profit watchdog group the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
The alleged overpayments were discovered as the IG conducted a much broader audit of the sheriff's finances. But the IG decided to highlight this finding ahead of that audit to “prevent further occurrences in time for the 2024 Carnival season,” the letter states.
Preliminary estimates indicate that some deputies made more than $100 an hour, although the full accounting of full payments won't be known until the audit is complete.
“What he's discovering was an error, miscalculation, mismanagement, whatever you want to call it,” Goyeneche said. “But it shouldn't have happened last year and he doesn't want it to happen again this year.”
In another development Thursday to prevent the pay issue from repeating itself, the city issued its cooperative endeavor agreement with the sheriff for Carnival security, with new language about compensation to avoid any over-payments to deputies.
But in a statement issued Thursday afternoon, the sheriff’s office disputed the inspector general’s findings, stating that it cooperated fully with investigators. The sheriff went on to accuse the IG of playing politics.
“For political purposes, the OIG, at every turn, has attempted to undermine the hard work of the OPSO staff who went above and beyond to support the city when called upon,” the statement reads.
The statement goes on to state, in part: “We disagree with the OIG’s mischaracterization of our work and payments made to staff who supported the operation to keep residents and visitors safe. As a contracted agency providing support to the City of New Orleans for parade security, OPSO assigned OPSO personnel to work the parade during their normal work hours as opposed to a voluntary off-duty assignment. OPSO believes legal authority demonstrates that the OIG’s contention that overtime was calculated improperly is erroneous.”
In a separate announcement Thursday, Sheriff Hutson she stated that she will once again help coordinate parade security with more than a hundred of her deputies and an estimated 240 deputies and officers from outside agencies.
Previously, the sheriff's office said that in 2023 a large number of deputies were mobilized on short notice last year, an unprecedented effort. And the office said that this year, things will run a lot smoother.
In Thursday’s announcement about the sheriff once again coordinating extra parade security, the office stated:
“Since November, Sheriff Hutson and OPSO leadership have worked with city administrators to nail down the logistics and finalize agreements to finance this large-scale operation. OPSO is once again spearheading the effort to recruit other agencies to support with parade security this year and is coordinating all logistics and scheduling for officers from other agencies.”
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