GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. -- The Guilford County Department of Social Services spent nearly $60,000 on overtime in one month. The department spent that money during March 2014, the same month the DSS dealt with its backlog of food stamp cases.
A year ago, in March 2013, the department spent only $1,019 on overtime. In February 2014, overtime costs rose to $14,767 and then in March 2014 it increased to $59,557.
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County Manager Marty Lawing said it pays for the overtime with "lapse salary" or money meant to pay for vacant positions. He said the federal government also reimburses the county 50 percent of the overtime. New Health and Human Services Director Joe Raymond said overtime is more efficient than hiring more employees, who would also need benefits.
"We're under federal expectations as you know in terms of timeliness and quality and we don't have a choice on the amount of work that we get to do. We have to respond to the number of people that come through the door and so overtime is by far the most cost-efficient solution," Raymond said.
The county plans to continue using overtime because of three things that have employees working longer hours. First, the county is still working through challenges with new benefits program NC FAST. Second, the county has been dealing with 5,500 overdue Medicaid cases inherited from the state. And overall, Raymond said there are more people in need.
"Overtime is the only real way in the short-term or temporary workers to handle this surge in workflow. What we all hope is that in a year or so the NC FAST system will be stable, all the cases will be converted into NC FAST and frankly the economy improves to the place that people, the high numbers we're seeing with both food stamps and Medicaid won't sustain, they'll go back to the 2008 level," he said.
Raymond said since 2008, food stamp cases have doubled. In Guilford County, there are currently about 110,000 people on food stamps or one in five people in the county. The number of county employees, however, didn't increase with the cases.
As of Wednesday, there were 22 overdue food stamp cases and fewer than 500 overdue Medicaid applications. Raymond said the department hopes to have those Medicaid applications completed in the next month.
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