BUFFALO, N.Y. — As the City of Buffalo looks to balance its budget, one of the biggest gaps is overtime. According to a recent report by the City Comptroller's Office, overtime costs totaled $41.1 million in FY2024, a 12.3% increase from last year.
The city's financial overseer produces the report annually to provide a "snapshot" of trends over the past 5 years and inform decision-making and policy-making.
On Tuesday, Internal Audit Administrator Sam Bruno presented a summary to the Buffalo Common Council Finance Committee. He noted that because payroll accounts for 40% of the city's operating budget, controlling and accurately accounting for it is an easy way to ensure balance each year.
"There are some concentrations with high overtime earners, basically 20 percent of the workforce is earning $20,000 in overtime and about 8 percent, $50,000 in overtime earnings, and if you look at overtime as a percentage of base pay in 2020, we were about 13 percent and for 2024 fiscal year, it was about 19 percent," said Bruno.
While not surprised by the findings, Councilmembers questioned why overtime budgeting was never recalibrated in the last five years, leading the city down the same path of having to make up the difference at year-end.
Councilmember Rasheed N.C. Wyatt said the additional overtime hits harder this year because projected revenues have fallen short of projections, exacerbating the same issue.
"If we don't control this number, we all need to find something else to do because this is ridiculous. It's unheard of and actually I'm going to take it back, I do hear this is happening nationally, but you've got to put a process in place to manage it. That's all I'm saying, because if we expect people to pay more in taxes and we raise revenues, that's the least we can do," said Wyatt.
Some overtime is offset by budgeted vacancies and attrition as Councilmember David Rivera and Acting Finance Commissioner Raymour Nosworthy pointed out.
"I don't know how many vacant positions are in those departments where we're seeing the overtime, but there is a savings on the other side because they're filling the positions that are there that are vacant," said Rivera.
For example, Nosworthy said that while there has been $11 million in overtime amongst Buffalo Police and Fire Department members, those overages are nearly negated by personnel gaps for a total of $1.8 million. That is not the case in other departments, however.
"There is a manpower shortage in DPW that does drive up overtime and that's an issue that the department and the administration are continuing to address," Nosworthy said.
As the city looks to plug its budget gap using one-time ARPA funds from the federal government which disappear at the end of the year if not designated, Councilmembers stipulated Tuesday that any resolution comes along with changes to overtime handling and budgeting procedures.
To learn more the operating budget discussions, watch the video below:
