A handful of state workers who are responsible for allocating federal funds to county water projects have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay in recent years, raising concerns that staff has been abusing overtime and sabotaging efforts to upgrade antiquated accounting processes that would make things more efficient.

Eight staff members who have worked for the Department of Health’s Water Revolving Fund have pulled in about $471,000 in overtime since fiscal year 2007, according to department records.

The staff is responsible for tracking and distributing tens of millions of dollars in federal funds for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

The state workers earn time and a half for overtime and the payments are factored into their future pension payments.

Individual staff members have filed for as many as 312 overtime hours in a three-month period — or the equivalent of working an extra two and a half weeks a month — according to department documents. The extra compensation has boosted salaries by as much as $25,000 a year.

Kevin Yoshioka, a loan officer, pulled in the most in overtime over the past nine years, earning an extra $132,235, according to department documents. His annual salary, before overtime, in 2013 was about $67,000.

Jennifer Teshima, an accountant, brought in the second most in overtime, earning an extra $90,984 over the past nine years. In 2013, she was earning a base pay of $51,313.

The generous overtime is expected to come to a halt soon as the department rolls out a new $450,000 financial and project tracking system next month, said Joanna Seto, who heads the department’s Safe Drinking Water Branch.

But one critic within the department, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said that fiscal staff has been pushing to keep the old system for as long as a year. The rationale is that a backup system is needed to make sure the new system is operating correctly, but keeping the old system in place will allow the staff to continue charging for overtime as they do now, the critic said.

Seto said that the department would continue using the old system "until we have completed validation that the new system is working well."

She wouldn’t speculate on how long that might take, but said she doubted it would be as long as a year.

"Overtime pay is not a benefit," she said. "It’s the result of not preparing well for the work that is needed to be done. With the new system, we believe that overtime will be reduced drastically and that the staff can be put to other potential projects."

A review of more than a dozen overtime request forms filed with top Health Department officials does not provide a clear picture of what type of work staff conducted during the thousands of overtime hours they claimed to have worked over the years. The reports group workers together and provide a general description of the department’s duties, such as filing annual reports and complying with audits, as rationale for the needed overtime.

In 2009, Tomas See, a wastewater branch chief, submitted an overtime request for two loan officers and an accountant to work 936 hours of overtime over the course of three months at a cost of $76,230.

"The need to work overtime for these positions is based on the fact that the … Clean Water State Revolving Fund program has many requirements and deadlines, which have been increasing in volume and complexity each year," See wrote.

This same justification was used for overtime requests throughout several years of reports.

In 2013, seven staff members claimed they needed to work 820 hours of overtime during the second quarter at a cost of about $38,000, again noting that requirements and deadlines "have been increasing in volume and complexity each year."

The overtime reports note that "an earnest attempt has been made to minimize the work during this time period."

The department’s poor accounting practices recently came under fire by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has threatened to take away the Health Department’s drinking-water funds if the department doesn’t do a better job of distributing federal funds to the counties to fix things such as broken water pipes and make other improvements needed to keep drinking water safe.

As of the end of last year, $100 million in federal and state matching funds under the drinking-water fund sat unspent, according to the EPA, even though the state estimates that $1 billion in repairs are needed over the next two decades. The department has done a better job of spending the clean-water funding.

The EPA cited poor financial management as one of the reasons that Hawaii has done a bad job of distributing funds to the counties.

Seto said that this is not the first time that the Health Department has tried to install a better financial tracking system. About 15 years ago, the state implemented new software, but she said it didn’t work well and was primarily scrapped. She didn’t know how much it cost, noting that she wasn’t with the department at that time.

In the years since then, the department has always had the funds to implement a new financial management system, she acknowledged, but never did. Costs for the new technology are being covered by EPA funding for the state loan programs.

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