By Jayvee Vallejera
The Office of Public Accountability has questioned $2.8 million in overtime costs at the Guam Homeland Security/Office of Civil Defense, which not only violated local and federal laws and standard operating procedures but also wasted federal dollars.
In its investigative audit of the office’s operating costs, OPA said the questioned overtime expenses were non-compliant with local and federal laws, the Department of Administration’s Personnel Rules and Regulations and standard operating procedures of the Bureau of Budget Management and Research.
The audit, which focused on overtime costs from fiscal years 2018 to 2023, was issued on Dec. 31, 2024. The first audit was released in June 2024. It focused on GHS/OCD’s operating costs series and summarized previous audit findings.
In the second audit, OPA said it found three areas of concern related to overtime payments: lack of authorization, over-expenditure and lack of documentation.
Auditors also found that GHS/OCD did not have standard operating procedures and allowed just one employee to have authority, custody, and accounting of federal grant expenditures, “which heightened the risk of fraud occurring.”
This audit was prompted by a hotline concern the OPA received about the administration of federal grants at GHS/OCD.
“The details that have emerged from this audit corroborate findings from the Premier Audit issued earlier this year, including unsupported charges to grants, level of effort, and non-compliance with written policies and procedures,” Public Auditor Benjamin J.F. Cruz said.
“Auditors found that overtime was unauthorized, unreasonable, unallocable, and not supported. GHS/OCD lacked standard operating procedures and segregation of duties, and prior audit findings of questionable activity heightened the risk of fraud," he added.
In one of its troubling findings, OPA auditors found that just 10 GHS/OCD employees incurred $1.8 million in overtime payments from fiscal years 2018 to 2023. The three highest paid made up 50 percent of the total cost.
“The overtime pay was processed retroactively or after the employee was paid for regular work hours and based on cash availability from the general fund,” the report added.
One of these 10 employees was continuously paid large amounts of overtime pay. Identified in the OPA report as Employee 1001 (administrative services officer), this person’s overtime pay reportedly ranged from $74,000 to $99,000 per fiscal year—an average of $89,000—and totaled $357,000, which made up more than half (61 percent) of their $589,000 gross pay.
These employees were part of management, grants management, finance and administration, and operations.
Besides not having a standard operating procedure for incurring overtime, the audit found that GHS/OCD’s established internal controls were ineffective as they were not strictly enforced. For one, GHS/OCD did not submit overtime plans for a major portion of its overtime cost, which made them unallowable as per the Bureau of Budget Management and Research’s SOP. For unplanned overtime costs, the audit found missing timesheets.
“The timesheets signed contained deficiencies and were the basis of overtime payments made. The payments were part of the $2.7 million in overtime expenditures that BBMR did not clear. In addition to those without BBMR clearance, we questioned $18,000 without payroll documentation for a total of $2.7 [million] in overtime expenditures not in compliance with applicable regulations, rules, and SOPs,” the OPA added.
Cruz said OPA will forward the results of this second audit to the Office of the Attorney General for further review.
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