The City of Winchester will pay about $62,000 in unpaid overtime to the Kentucky Department of Labor this month, after qualifying firefighters made claims for the funds.
The Winchester Board of Commissioners approved an order Tuesday authorizing the payment. In late August, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that municipal governments are subject to the state wage and hour laws, and are not immune to suits brought on by the Labor Cabinet to regain unpaid overtime.
Cities tried to stop the Labor Cabinet in court from pursuing the unpaid overtime after a 2007 Kentucky Court of Appeals decision increased the money cities would owe. Before 2007, the Labor Cabinet outlined a formula for cities to follow when calculating overtime.
Mayor Ed Burtner said cities will have to pay, even though officials followed the Labor Cabinet’s previous formula.
“I want to emphasize to the public that the method by which the City of Winchester was calculating overtime pay was the exact, precise method that we were instructed to do so by the Department of Labor,” he said. “As a result, doing exactly what we were told to do ... we now have this additional liability that we litigated over along with about a dozen other cities and counties. We were unsuccessful in a very disappointing way ... but it has now reached the point where we have exhausted all the administrative and legal remedies, and it is now time to do what we need to do.”
The ruling made in August means that Winchester is responsible for a total of about $750,000 in overtime pay for time worked by firefighters over a five-year period.
City Manager Ken Kerns said with approval of the order Tuesday, between 20 and 25 firefighters will be paid the overtime this month. He said this represents about one-fourth of the total number of firefighters who will receive payment from the city because of the Supreme Court ruling.
Kerns said the group that will be paid this month is separate from the group of firefighters that filed a lawsuit in Clark County Circuit Court to regain overtime pay. The payment to those firefighters has not come before commissioners.
Contact Katie Perkowski at kperkowski@winchestersun.com or follow her on Twitter, @TheSunKatie.
