The Nevada Department of Corrections’ (NDOC) lax and inconsistent internal pay policies have resulted in spiraling overtime payouts that are costing the state more than $18 million annually, a recent state audit found.

The audit, presented at a state meeting last month, found widespread errors in overtime timesheets and a surge of overtime requests without reasons provided. Auditors found that employees often used the wrong shift codes, earned overtime when they planned on paid and unpaid leave, and violated other NDOC pay policies. It also noted that a reliance on overtime to fill staffing shortages was a key driver of the burgeoning costs.

The audit suggested increased enforcement of payroll practices, including training new administrators to oversee payroll practices, as well as bolstering recruitment and retention efforts. The agency said it will work to adopt the recommendations, but similar suggestions from prior studies were never implemented, and the auditors' request for the status of previous recommendations went unanswered, the report said.

NDOC did not respond to a request for comment.

The findings come months after state legislators learned that the agency was facing a $53 million budget hole during the previous two-year budget cycle as a result of the increased overtime. The audit, which commenced in January, focused on overtime payouts in the fiscal year that ended mid-2024.

The department has long struggled with spiraling overtime costs to alleviate chronic staffing shortages, and the cost burden has increased exponentially. From 2020 to 2024, NDOC saw more than a 130 percent increase in overtime hours, leading to a $35 million increase in overtime costs, the audit found. More than 80 percent of overtime costs were related to “offender management,” while 4 percent were related to “uncoded overtime hours.” Another 5 percent were designated as “other.” 

During an executive branch audit meeting in July, Gov. Joe Lombardo raised concerns about the department’s long-standing challenges with overtime, which have been flagged in state audits since 2003. 

“These problems were identified way before the audit results. Have we done anything proactive to try to fix that particular issue?” Lombardo asked NDOC Director James Dzurenda during the meeting. 

Dzurenda said that NDOC has implemented new, streamlined overtime codes and has begun to train additional officers. The department has also begun using a system that will alert a supervisor of suspected violations of the policy. During this year’s session, the Legislature approved an additional 47 positions, which could help reduce the need for overtime, Dzurenda said.  

“I think it'll all correct itself once we complete all these recommendations,” he said. 

More findings

The audit found that more than half of the overtime timesheets reviewed had problems and more than 70 percent of all timesheets tested in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 violated the agency’s pay policies. 

In fiscal year 2024, NDOC employees logged about 38,000 overtime hours — amounting to nearly $2.1 million in payouts — that lacked a reason code. This was an increase of nearly 65,000 percent from the number of hours without a reason code in fiscal year 2020, which the agency attributed to inexperienced supervisors.

Also in fiscal year 2024, about 78 percent of employees did not provide a reason code when receiving paid administrative leave, which is a requirement for unionized workers. Auditors noted that this “could result in covered employees taking more paid administrative leave than allowed by [collective bargaining agreement] terms, or non-covered employees taking leave they are not entitled to.”

Auditors also disputed one of the agency’s rationales for increasing overtime costs. At a March meeting of the state’s Board of Examiners — a panel composed of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state — agency leaders attributed it in part to officers taking overtime to oversee an increasingly large training class.

“However, the audit determined that there is not adequate distinction in coding used by employees to determine the accuracy of NDOC calculations,” the report said.

Meanwhile, six of NDOC’s 26 facilities accounted for 96 percent of the increases in overtime hours in the past five years. 

Notably, prison populations actually declined in the facilities that had the most overtime growth. The audit attributed those increases to facility-specific demands. Out of all the facilities, Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center in Clark County saw the largest increase in overtime, jumping by more than 500 percent between 2020 and 2024.