Paul Bass Photos
New dispatchers Evangeline Rivera, Karryann Freire and Rosemary Fuentes at training this week.
Briscoe: Topped 57K in OT.
City Chief Adminstrative Officer Mike Carter said he’s moving to get overtime costs under control at the 911 call center after payments piled up for the boss there.
“Going forward, wkly OT hours in excess of 15 are to be approved by Mike Carter,” reads a handwritten note on a time sheet submitted by Michael Briscoe, director of the call center (known as the Public Service Answering Point, or PSAP), for the week ending May 5.
Briscoe had logged 29 overtime hours, at $58.55 per hour, for that week. Briscoe — who unlike most division heads receives overtime pay, thanks to a special deal with the Harp administration — averaged 18.92 hours of overtime during his first year in the job, which ended March 31. He pulled in $57,401.11 in overtime, boosting his overall pay $126,702.11, according to records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Act.
The note about Carter approving excess hours appeared six days after the filing of the records request.
Carter said Briscoe’s overtime reflects not a problem with how Briscoe does his job, but a larger overtime and staffing problem at the call center — including a staff shortage and a training deficit.
Briscoe agreed. He said he’s been working hard to tackle it, thwarted by opposition by one of two union locals representing PSAP workers.
“I have a plan” to save overtime money while protecting public safety, Briscoe said. “I know what the hell I’m doing.
“Right now I’ve got half the department that can’t do their job. I can take [workers] being mad at me. I know I’m doing the right thing. I know I’m trying to meet the needs of public safety. It could be my naivete” to believe others had the same goals.
Cross-Training
The city has been trying to modernize the 911 call center for years. One goal: to cross-train dispatchers so they can handle both fire and police emergency calls.
In recent months, Briscoe said, he has had to scramble to make sure the center was fully staffed. Eight cross-trained dispatchers left over the past year, he said. That left PSAP dangerously understaffed. This week three new dispatchers were being trained; upon completion, they’ll bring the number of dispatchers back up to 46, one short of full strength. The dispatchers handle well more than 100,000 emergency calls a year.
Many of those dispatchers still aren’t cross-trained, including 13 out of 14 dispatchers hired between 2005 and 2012, who should have been cross-trained by now, Briscoe said. And only three of eight supervisors are cross-trained.
Meanwhile, many dispatchers and some supervisors have been “booking off” at the last minute without advance notice, especially on Friday and Saturday overnight shifts (and especially the night of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, when “nobody wanted to come in”). So, Briscoe said, many of his overtime hours have been spent scrambling to find people to fill dispatch or supervisory slots. His overtime costs more than other staffers’ overtime. And supervisors filling in for dispatchers cost more on overtime than do other dispatchers.
As a result PSAP is spending about $8,600 a week on overtime, according to Briscoe.
Briscoe said he could have cross-trained many more dispatchers by now if not for a battle with AFSCME Local 884, which represents the dispatchers. In February he sought to begin an annual “bid” during which dispatchers put in preferences for which shifts to work. In the past the decisions about whom to schedule when went by seniority — those with more years on the job got first pick. Briscoe sought to alter that temporarily, during the course of the cross-training: He wanted to make sure that all kinds of slots (those requiring knowledge of the police system and those requiring knowledge of the fire system) were filled at all times while some dispatchers were off being cross-trained. That way he could limit overtime.
Dispatchers protested; one dispatcher told the Independent that morale has plummeted as a result. Briscoe insisted he had a right to implement that system under the AFSCME contract. The union appealed to the city’s labor relations department; city Labor Relations Director Marcus Paca ordered Briscoe not to implement the new temporary system.
“Neither the language nor the past practice has allowed management to subcategorize employees by assignments or skill sets. Deviation from the status quo clearly constitutes a prohibited, unilateral change in work conditions … ” Paca wrote to Briscoe on Feb. 26.
“Management may not ignore seniority by creating specialized bidding groups based on assignment/skill set or any other factor.”
“We could have been through the first wave of cross-training” and saved $100,000 each quarter in overtime, Briscoe said this week, citing this similar experiment in Pennsylvania (which saved a quarter that much money in a center with one-quarter the staff of New Haven’s).
Briscoe said he’s eager to reopen discussions with Local 884 President Doreen Rhodes. He said she’s not taking his calls.
“I’m ready to meet with them when they’re ready,” Briscoe said.
“The resistance that I am facing to render better public safety communications is unfortunate. The businesses, citizens, and visitors of this city deserve better.”
Rhodes (pictured) referred questions to AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman. Dorman said he “appreciates” that Paca affirmed the union’s reading of the contract. “We are always accessible” to further discussion, Dorman said. “We all want the same thing — the most responsive system we can have.”
Local 884’s contract expires June 30. The city will have the chance to revisit the issue in negotiations, which have not yet begun.
In the meantime, Briscoe said he’s having more success negotiating with AFSCME Local 3144, which represents supervisors, on a plan to have supervisors rotate on a weekend on-call list.
Local 3144 President Poindexter said she has discussed the idea with Briscoe, with whom she has a “good working relationship.”
“I’m not saying we can work it out,” Poindexter stressed. “He brought it up to me. I told him I would talk to my people and let him know. They work there; I do not.”
Longer-Than-Expected “Average” Week
Briscoe’s appointment last year sparked controversy, for two reasons.
Reason one: The city had negotiated with the police and fire unions for the right to hire a civilian to run PSAP. Previously, PSAP had two separate bosses, one from the fire department, one from police. The city argued that having one civilian would save money.
But Briscoe came from the fire department. So the fire union filed an objection. Some unrelated bad blood preceded that objection: Briscoe had sued the city over fire promotions, arguing that he’d been racially discriminated against. (He’s black. This was a separate suit from one filed by mostly white firefighters over a different promotional test.) The Harp administration settled Briscoe’s suit for $285,000.
Reason two for the controversy: Briscoe hesitated to take the PSAP job because it would mean a cut in pay, because as a manager he could no longer collect overtime the way firefighters can. he’d have to retire as a firefighter to take the PSAP job.
Mayor Toni Harp offered Briscoe a special deal, which Briscoe accepted: For the first 18 months of his serve as PSAP director, he could officially remain a firefighter while holding down the PSAP job on an “acting” basis. (In Briscoe’s March 31, 2014, offer of employment letter, Harp cited Article III, Section 2(A)(5) of the city charter as the basis for her right to do that.) In his new job, he would receive his firefighter base salary (then $67,283, or $36.97 an hour). Then, for every hour over 35 each week, he’d be paid time and a half. On Oct. 31, 2015, Briscoe will become the permanent director and, like other city department heads, earn a straight salary, $98,000 in his case.
“Under this arrangement, your actual yearly salary cannot be accurately predicted. However, the average week generally requires the Director to work between forty and forty-five hours. Of course, the nature of this position often gives rise to circumstances where more — and, in some circumstances, substantially more — hours would be required in a given week,” Harp wrote.
As it has turned, an average week has found Briscoe filing for “substantially more” overtime hours.
“That deal was struck before I got here” from D.C. to become chief administrative officer, said Carter (pictured). Like Briscoe, Carter said the problem lies in the staffing and training problems at PSAP, which he said he’s working hard to address.
Carter emphasized that he feels Briscoe is doing a good job as PSAP director. “I want to know,” he added, if “there are disciplinary issues we need to deal with” involving “people booking out and not calling in. That’s something we’re going to have to deal with.”
Most of the weekly overtime sheets submitted by Briscoe do not detail the overtime work. The most recently obtained list, for the week ending May 12 (which included 20 overtime hours), includes this explanation: “On Saturday, I worked with [Deputy Director] G. Peet regarding staffing issues. This response ended up with George Peet being assigned to work from 8 – 12 that morning. At Roughly midnight on Saturday into Sunday stimulated by an email and shift report I called I spoke with C. Sinsigalli about staffing, the contract, and Signal 111 refusals. I have forwarded an email to Mike Carter.
“2nd Alarm Fire at 1:59 am, George Peet Books off at 2:15; I remain available in lieu of DD Peet. As of 5-10-2015 I am at 15 hours of overtime. I called Mike Carter to alert him of this and to explain that we still have to get through Monday and Tuesday.”
“Offense” & “Defense”
Meanwhile, the police union has gone to the state labor board to object to Briscoe’s hiring and insist that the city hire a second person — a cop — to become a SPA director, too, just as under the old system.
Louis Cavaliere Jr., who until Tuesday night served as the union president, said the city had won the right to name a civilian in contract negotiations. Now that it chose to hire a firefighter instead, Cavaliere argued, the cops deserve a spot too.
Mike Carter disagreed with Cavaliere’s argument. He said he believes a director can be trained in both systems, which save the public money. (Carter is currently undergoing training in the police 911 system.)
“In D.C., we didn’t have this issue of [separate] police and fire” 911 positions, Carter said, referring to his previous city of government employment. “This territorial stuff is somewhat confusing to me. That’s like saying, ‘You can play offense; you can’t play defense.’ Come on.”
As an employee of the center I am hurt by reading this article. Yes we are short staffed, and have been for years. However, I just want to know how the director is allowed to make more in overtime than our salaries amount too. He and the deputy director are hard to reach on the weekends to for Briscoe to say that he is helping to find coverage is a flat out lie. Now he is here late nights but that is because he is working on his course work for his degree. So is he getting overtime to do school work. if so it must be nice