Randy Brock, the Republican candidate for governor, followed in incumbent Peter Shumlin’s footsteps on Thursday: He called the week’s second impromptu press conference to talk about overtime for state workers.
Shumlin called a snap press conference on Tuesday to publicly announce that a Vermont State Police sergeant had resigned after he was allegedly discovered committing overtime fraud.
Brock said if the case of Sgt. James Deeghan, who allegedly made fraudulent overtime compensation claims, is true, the state trooper criminally manipulated taxpayer money.
In the first minute of the press conference, Brock pivoted from the alleged wrongdoings of one officer to condemning what he called a systemic management problem within state government that goes all the way to the top.
“We’ve heard over the past several days concerns about a particular state police officer and some overtime that may have been the result of improper overtime filings,” he started. “That’s a terrible thing, and if in fact that did happen, it clearly should be pursued to the fullest extent possible. But what I think it does is it fails to have us focus on what is a much larger problem, and I believe it’s a leadership problem and it relates to the whole issue of overtime and overtime spending in state government. In fiscal 2011, Vermont spent $16.2 million in cash overtime payments. That was up, and the first year in which the Shumlin administration was responsible for this number, it was up 12.5 percent.”
Brock said that while overtime payouts from the state fell in FY2009 and FY2010, they went up more than 10 percent in FY2011, according to a report released by the Department of Human Resources on Thursday. He pointed out that the last six months of that year were at the beginning of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s first term in office.
Brock said his work in the private sector informed his views about public sector spending.
“Overtime should always be at or close to zero,” Brock said. “Overtime is the difference between profit and loss, and when you have ingrained overtime for year after year after year, and in fact it’s going up, it’s a symbol that personnel management is not being done as well or as effectively as it should be.”
Brock called for an in-depth study of overtime spending including an analysis of what logistical issues are causing the state to pay out so much in overtime and an examination what changes need to be made to bring that number down.
Does that mean hiring more state workers? Brock said maybe. He was careful not to call for any changes before a thorough analysis is completed.
“The point is, this is not simply a situation of people improperly using overtime, this is a situation of the entire management of the overtime system and the high costs that result from it,” Brock said.
While he started off with the fiscal year 2011 numbers released by the Department of Human Resources, Brock later said overtime spending is a problem that reaches back beyond Shumlin.
“I’m looking at the overtime picture for a number of years,” he said. “In fiscal 2007, we spent $15.5 million in overtime, and in fiscal 2011, we spent $16.2 million so this is a long-standing problem in state government. What I do see, though, is that from fiscal ’08 to fiscal ’09, overtime dropped, and in fiscal ’10 it dropped.”
Brock was state auditor from 2005 to 2007 before he became a state senator. When reporters asked why he didn’t tackle the problems as a senator, he said he wasn’t on the proper committees to confront the issue. When they asked why he didn’t address the issue as state auditor, he said it had been on his to-do list.
“It was one of the issues – I was auditor for two years and I had a spreadsheet, and on that spreadsheet was a list of audit projects in order of priority, and that was a changing list,” Brock said. “And the issue of overtime, and particularly the Department of Public Safety, was one of those issues.”
But Brock didn’t get around do it, he said, “because we had even higher priorities at that time, if you recall, one of the highest priorities at that time was getting our books in order because during the two years that I was auditor, we had a period of time in which we weren’t getting audits done. The state had not completed its annual audit on time in years, and as state auditor I got it done on time.”
Brock later said he hadn’t had a chance to review the overtime numbers until shortly before today’s 2:30 p.m. press conference was announced at 1:47 p.m. Shumlin also left news outlets with a small window to attend Tuesday’s press conference where he went public with information about the overtime fraud investigation into former Sgt. James Deeghan.
While Shumlin’s sudden conference was in response to a breaking news event – Deeghan resigned from his post at around 10 a.m. Tuesday, officials said – Brock’s hastily called presser did not appear to be tied to a current event.
One reporter asked Brock if the late addition to his schedule was an attempt to buffer against headlines about an incident that morning in which Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, reaffirmed a statement he made last weekend in which he compared the Internal Revenue Service with Nazi Germany’s Gestapo. Jewish groups have asked for a public apology.
When Paul Heinz of Seven Days Newspaper asked Lepage if he thought the IRS was headed in the direction of “killing a lot of people,” the governor said, “Yeah.”
Brock said there was no connection between the LePage press availability and the impromptu press conference held a few hours later.
“This was added to my schedule because this morning was the first time I received these reports and was able to look at the numbers,” Brock said. “It had absolutely nothing to do with what Governor LePage said or didn’t say. Governor LePage has never been accused of being politically correct, and he lived up to his reputation this morning.”
Jake Perkinson, chair of the Vermont Democratic Party, said “Brock should be ashamed to stand next to anyone who makes such an extreme, irresponsible, and bizarre statement.”
“Governor LePage’s rhetoric is so far from Vermont values that it’s hard to believe Randy Brock not only welcomed him to our state, but stood by his side when LePage made this comment,” Perkinson said. “Randy Brock should apologize to Vermonters for bringing this extreme and divisive figure to our state, and for standing idly by while LePage made his comment.”
