Louisiana mayor to review overtime pay of city officials

Monroe, Louisiana, mayor Jamie Mayo will review the city's practice of overtime pay after a discrepancy in the city's engineering department allowed a worker on sick leave to collect unconfirmed amounts of overtime earnings, the Monroe News-Star reports.

In a filing to the mayor's office, the city's human resources director, Mike Rhymes, claims Ricardo Nance - a traffic engineering employee - received 25 hours of overtime pay during each pay period when Nance was eligible for disability.

The pattern supposedly began last summer when engineers received 25 hours of overtime when out on assignment. However, Rhymes told the paper that a pattern of suspicious payments alerted him to the potential of payroll fraud within the department.

Rhymes acknowledged that payroll fraud was possible because no approvals were given for the overtime payments and there are no work logs showing Nance and others were on the job.

"The whole issue is still under review," Mayo told the News-Star. "We are hoping to wrap up everything as soon as we can so we can move forward."

The lack of a defined payroll process has potentially cost thousands of dollars in unwarranted payments, yet city officials are still examining proper procedure.

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