New Hampshire’s Department of Corrections has run $10.8 million over its budget for employee overtime, and department leaders asked the state’s Executive Council on Wednesday to shuffle money within the department to pay for those shifts.
The five councilors, who control the purse strings and serve as a check on the governor’s power, acquiesced but questioned the department on its planning and spending practices.
Helen Hanks, the former commissioner of the Department of Corrections, resigned abruptly last month. State officials haven’t said why, though some lawmakers had taken issue with prison practices under her tenure.
The lion’s share of additional overtime money goes to the state’s three prisons. In Concord, the men’s prison will get $4.5 million and the women’s prison will get about $900,000. The men’s facility in Berlin will get $3 million.
Overtime is often mandatory in the department, as the state can force officers to work more hours to cover staffing shortages. Fewer people are applying for and staying in corrections jobs across the country.
In New Hampshire, the portion of unfilled corrections jobs has gone down over the past year and a half, from a 52% vacancy rate last January to a 43% vacancy rate this May, according to documents submitted to the Executive Council.
The department is also spending more on its employees, as unions have negotiated pay increases for corrections workers, including a 10% and 2% wage increase for all staff members; double overtime for corrections officers after 80 hours; double time for holidays, and a 30% bump for nursing staff; and up to 35% for behavioral health workers.
Not all the money has come through for those raises yet, according to the documents, and those “unfunded increases” will leave the Department of Corrections with an $8.3 million deficit in its personnel budget line, where it’s drawing money from vacant positions to cover overtime costs.
The department plans to request more money from the state’s pay and benefit adjustment funds to make up the difference.
Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.
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