LINCOLN- Seventeen employees of Nebraska’s prison system more than doubled the size of their paychecks during the past fiscal year.

How? They made more in overtime pay than they did in base salary, according to data the state recently provided the Flatwater Free Press.

Some 145 employees of the Nebraska Department of Corrections made at least half their base salary in overtime — part of spiraling overtime costs in the prison system that have cost taxpayers $48 million in the past three years.

The state’s highest overtime earner — a corrections caseworker named Donald Hiatt — was nearly able to triple his salary by working overtime between July 2020 and June 2021. He earned a base pay of $47,840 and an additional $97,400 in overtime pay.

The large individual overtime payments reflect an ongoing crisis faced by the state’s prisons, long overcrowded and now severely understaffed, according to state leaders and experts.

And while recent raises for prison staff offer some hope, Nebraska’s most understaffed prisons have seen little reduction in the need for overtime hours, said Corrections Director Scott Frakes.

In the short term, overtime will cost taxpayers even more: Before the recent raises, it cost 15% more to pay overtime than it did to hire a new employee. The raises — which also supercharge overtime pay — boost that difference to about 55%, Frakes said.

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