What A Waste Of Money
Editorial | February 28, 2017
The Southbury Training School is an obsolete, rundown institution that hasn’t admitted any new residents in 30 years. The state has to commit to closing it. Its wild overtime costs continue to suck taxpayer money that could be better spent serving many more people with intellectual disabilities at much more reasonable cost in smaller private facilities.
One state worker at Southbury, for example, pumped up her $60,000 base salary to a hard-to-believe $196,000 with overtime this past fiscal year, The Courant’s Josh Kovner has reported. With fringe benefits, she earned $237,886 — more than Gov. Dannel P. Malloy makes.
Did that worker get any days off with all that OT?…
Four of her colleagues earned an are-you-kidding-me $100,000 each in overtime. Another 50 earned $50,000 or more in OT.
Altogether, Southbury’s 615 full- and part-time employees (serving just 229 clients) earned an average of $20,000 each in overtime.
This is an extravagant waste of public money. Moreover, it’s inhumane to work people too many hours. Long hours lead to high injury rates and poor performance, and that could endanger the elderly, vulnerable residents of Southbury.