Oakland budget ups police overtime; many officers make six figures in extra hours alone

Oakland leaders closed a $265 million city budget deficit by cutting spending across many departments and programs earlier this month in what Councilmember Zac Unger called a “nobody’s happy budget.” 

But one controversial area of spending is seeing a substantial increase in the new budget: police overtime.

Over the last decade, the Oakland Police Department has consistently overspent its overtime budget by tens of millions of dollars each year. Last year, as the city’s fiscal crisis deepened, the police department overspent on overtime by record levels. For the fiscal year that ended in June 2024, OPD spent over $55 million on overtime, according to city records — more than double what it was supposed to.

For the current fiscal year ending on Monday, the department is estimated to surpass its overtime budget of $25 million, but it’s unclear by how much. The last time the city shared estimates for OPD’s overtime spending was in mid-May. The city said OPD was on track to exceed it’s overtime budget by over $26 million.

Last year, 169 officers made over $100,000 in overtime, public records reveal. Of these, 27 officers made over $200,000. The top earner, Timothy Dolan, who also serves as vice president of the police union, brought home nearly $500,000 in overtime alone.

Sgt. Huy Nguyen, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association, said overspending on overtime isn’t the police department’s fault. He pointed to the city’s high crime rate, low police officer staffing levels, and the level of services city leaders demand of OPD as reasons why the department spends so much each year above its budget.

“People don’t want to work overtime, people want to go to work and they want to go home,” Nguyen said. “It’s not the officers that make the decision to go out there and create all these projects and all these issues that exist in our city.”

However, a recent analysis of police overtime by several city unions questioned whether staffing levels and crime rates are the main reasons for the constantly rising overtime in Oakland. Researchers with the unions International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21, Service Employees International Union 1021, and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 1245, which represent non-police employees, found that when OPD’s sworn staffing levels increased, overtime spending continued to rise. Similarly, overtime spending rose in past years even when crime dropped.

The new budget sets aside more money than ever for overtime. However, it may not be enough if the city is unable to control how much overtime OPD actually logs. For the next two fiscal years, starting July 1 and ending June 30, 2027, the City Council has set aside $72 million for police overtime — about $34 million for the first year and $38 million for the second. If OPD continues its pattern of overspending, it’s unlikely that the $72 million would cover the department’s costs.

Cat Brooks, executive director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said police overtime is squeezing out many other essential city services.

“What happens to the rest of our community members who need social services, who need departments to be open?” Brooks asked. “What happens to the workers whose positions are frozen? All because of the insatiable appetite of the Oakland Police Department and their budget.”

Overspending on overtime has been cited as one of the largest reasons for the city’s growing budget deficits. As these deficits have expanded, pressure to reduce police overtime spending has increased.

In December, City Administrator Jestin Johnson announced that cuts to the police and fire departments had become unavoidable. Johnson and the City Council agreed to trim police overtime spending by $25 million for the fiscal year that ends on June 30. However, in February, city finance staff reported that savings would actually only amount to about $14 million.

The city did not respond to questions from The Oaklandside about whether the $14 million goal was met.

Audits keep flagging OT

Part of the city’s plan to gain more control over overtime spending was to require police employees to get written approval from the mayor’s office and city administrator for any “foreseeable overtime” moving forward. However, city and police officials have not been able to explain what types of overtime are considered “foreseeable” and how much of the department’s use of overtime the policy change actually applies to.

Police spokesperson Paul Chambers declined to answer questions about “foreseeable overtime” and the new policy’s implementation. The city administrator’s office also did not respond. 

Police overtime has long been an expensive wildcard for Oakland’s finances.

In 2015, a report by the city auditor found that police overtime costs had grown 80% over the previous four years. The report found that OPD wasn’t drafting realistic budgets, underestimating the overtime it would use by millions each year. Nearly one-third of overtime authorization forms were missing, among other problems.

The auditor’s team updated the police overtime study in 2019, finding again that OPD wasn’t realistically accounting for the overtime it used each year and pointing out other problems. The audit included 23 recommendations to combat overtime overspending. In 2022, the auditor’s office revisited the issue again, finding that many of their recommendations to get a handle on overtime still hadn’t been implemented.

Last year, in response to the city auditor’s findings, Oakland’s city administration said they were building a new digital scheduling system for the police department and that this system would be up and running in December 2024. A second phase of the system would deal specifically with curtailing overtime spending and was scheduled to go live in December 2025. However, asked about the new scheduling system in November, city spokespeople said no progress had been made on the project. They cited a “contractual issue,” but did not provide details. 

Chambers declined to answer questions, saying “no additional details will be released.”

Outdated system to track OT

Over half of the recommendations from the 2019 audit have not been fully implemented, and with the scrapping of the scheduling system, it’s unclear how the city plans to address them.

Orsolya Kovesdi, performance audit manager in the city auditor’s office who wrote the 2019 report, said a major hurdle to reducing overtime is lack of technology. The department does not have a fully computerized scheduling system, so much of its scheduling and budgeting is still tracked on paper, including overtime management. The city was planning to implement a digital scheduling system — in fact, this was the city’s main strategy to curtail overtime spending — but for reasons unclear, the plan fell apart.

“Nothing is really changing,” Kovesdi said in a recent interview about Oakland’s efforts to rein in overtime spending. “It seems things are going backward rather than going forward.”

What in particular killed the new scheduling system has perplexed auditor’s office staff, who said city officials provided little explanation on why the change was scrapped.

Meanwhile, numerous OPD officers continue to log lengthy overtime hours.

This story was co-published with The Oaklandside.

---

The Stakes: Oakland immigrant blindsided by loss of Social Security benefits