Prison guard musical chairs incurs $60 million in overtime, $50 million shortfall
Nevada Department of Corrections Director James Dzurenda. (Legislative stream screengrab)
The Nevada Department of Corrections is racking up $60 million in overtime a year because of the need to shift correction officers from one post to another to address staffing shortages, resulting in a $50 million dollar budgeting shortfall that took lawmakers by surprise during a hearing Thursday of the Interim Finance Committee.
NDOC Director James Dzurenda told lawmakers he was instructed by the Governor's Finance Office last year that the department's personnel shortage could not be addressed until a staffing study initiated in 2024 is completed in June.
Dzurenda testified the department is 'usually about $60 million short on day one' of a biennium because of overtime demands. He predicted the study will 'be devastating' and reveal a biennial shortfall of 'over $100 million.'
'So you're saying that your agency told the governor's office… 'hey, we're going to run into huge deficits. We're going to overspend like nobody's business in overtime,' and they were aware of this, and they just didn't bring it to our attention until March?' an incredulous Sen. Rochelle Nguyen asked Dzurenda.
'I don't know when they brought it to your attention, but these discussions have been happening since I got here in '23,' Dzurenda responded. 'We knew we were going to be short, and I'm telling you, we're going to be short next time, too.'
Lombardo did not respond to a request for comment. The governor, when asked about economic concerns in recent months, has repeatedly referred to 'triaging' the state through any fiscal storm.
Triaging in the state prison department amounts to reducing visitation and shifting in-person educational programming to correspondence courses.
The overtime problem, Dzurenda said, 'is complicated' and involves a number of variables, such as delays in obtaining a staffing study to substantiate the need for additional positions; unbudgeted costs such as transporting prisoners; staffing NDOC's training academy; and the cost of overtime provisions included in a collective bargaining agreement negotiated in 2023 for correction officers.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro told Dzurenda if he was aware of a 'regular, ongoing use of overtime monies,' a request should have been made for 'a reserve of X amount of dollars that we believe we are going to have to pay overtime.'
Instead, she argued Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo's administration 'turned a blind eye to it,' leaving lawmakers 'halfway through a legislative session, to figure out how to fill that hole.'
One corrections officer has racked up 1,600 hours of overtime since the fiscal year began, 'which puts you on track to work 80-hour weeks,' Nguyen said, adding she was 'incredibly disappointed' and branded the episode 'a failure on so many levels.'
NDOC's current solution, she added, cuts the education programs that 'from what we've heard from you, Director, over and over and over again, actually make those prisons safer for your correction officers and safer for the people that are incarcerated in there. Is that my understanding?'
'Yes,' Dzurenda replied.
Democratic Assemblywoman Danielle Monroe Moreno, a former corrections officer, voiced a 'need to apologize' to Dzurenda, adding she didn't know if the governor or the Legislature had put him in a situation that 'is not winnable.'
'We have a responsibility to make sure that you get what you need for your staff to be safe and the inmates in our charge to be safe,' she said, and directed NDOC to seek additional funding during the legislative interim.
In other IFC developments, Monroe Moreno warned agencies with projects funded by American Rescue Plan funds, which will revert to the federal government if not spent by the end of next year, that because of President Donald Trump's tariffs, increasing costs of construction and goods could jeopardize their timely completion.
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