Editor's Note, 12/31/2024: This article, originally published on Dec. 10, has been updated to reflect the latest developments and new reporting.
Andy Thompson was looking forward to spending Christmas out of town with family for the first time in years. After a tough year spent working long hours, balancing his family’s finances and managing several personal hardships, the trip was a splurge he believed he had earned.
But just before the holidays, a financial wrench was thrown into his plans. Thompson is an officer at the Dallas County Jail, one of the 700 officers whose paychecks were short for several weeks leading up to the holidays. There was $800 missing from his paycheck the week before Thanksgiving, then more than $1,600 left off his Dec. 6 paycheck. On Dec. 20, less than a week before Christmas, came the third strike: his check was short by nearly $2,000.
“I'm having to realize the county just doesn't care,” he told the Observer.
The missing money meant Thompson — who spoke with us using a pseudonym because he was concerned about retaliation from his employer — spent Christmas in Dallas. He pushed off bills so he could afford gifts for his family members.
According to Dallas County officials, a tweak to the Kronos payroll system resulted in hundreds of officers missing pay through the end of November and December — the time of year they need it most. Formerly, supervisors would record employees’ overtime worked after each eight hour day, but a new policy requires that overtime be recorded only after an employee has worked 40 hours in a week, and compensatory time — time off given in lieu of overtime pay — is now the default payment for that overtime. County officials claim that the 200 timekeepers charged with recording employees’ time worked were trained and are continuing to be trained on the new system management.
But the number of erroneous paychecks issued shows that there were cracks in the county’s system.
In the Dec. 17 Commissioners Court meeting, officials confirmed that 700 officers had their overtime hours coded to be paid with comp time, resulting in the officers’ paychecks being lower than they had expected. Those officials assured commissioners that the problems with the way overtime hours were being counted had been remedied, and that the money missing from the Nov. 22 check was paid to officers on Nov. 25. The money missing from the Dec. 6 would be included in the Dec. 20 paycheck. Continued timekeeper training would ensure that no one received an erroneous check after Dec. 6.
“We want to make sure everybody has their money for Christmas, and as far as we know, this overtime has been corrected,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said with a note of cautious optimism. “There’s nobody that has not received money that is owed to them, right?”
Reporting by the Observer found that pay issues did persist, though. As of the Dec. 20 paycheck, we were told there were still dozens of incorrect balances. There has been improvement, but the financial delays officers experienced meant less money to pay for Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas presents.
How the Problem Began
When Thompson clocked in at work on Nov. 22, he overheard disgruntled whispers among his fellow Dallas County Jail officers. It was payday, but when the officers had checked their bank balances that morning, several discovered that their paychecks were smaller than expected. As he spoke with coworkers throughout the day, Thompson heard about paychecks being anywhere from $200 to $1,400 short. With Thanksgiving a week away, some officers lamented that they’d have to prioritize paying bills over purchasing a turkey, he said.
After calculating the overtime hours he’d worked during the pay period, Thompson — who has worked at the jail for more than five years — realized his check was $800 less than expected. Within a week, the county sent Thompson the missing amount, but the problem wasn’t fixed by the time the next payday rolled around.
On Dec. 6, Thompson’s paycheck was missing 35 hours of overtime pay, which at time-and-half overtime rates amounts to more than $1,600 in lost wages.
“It's just been a whole mess. Morale is in the crapper,” Thompson said at the time. “Now people are worried about if they're even going to get to buy their kids Christmas presents, because they may not even have enough money to pay their bills let alone do Christmas. So it's just a stressful situation.”
A spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Labor confirmed that the department’s Wage and Hour Division had opened an investigation into the missing wages officers began reporting in November. The investigation is said to be “ongoing,” but no other information was made available.
The Observer spoke with four officers employed at the Dallas County Jail who were not financially compensated for overtime hours worked for at least two of the last three pay periods. One officer had multiple complaints over inaccurate pay forwarded to a third-party payroll company, which then referred the officer back to their direct supervisors. Those supervisors, in turn, told the officer to reach out to the third-party company.
“No one is taking responsibility,” said the officer, who said they had not received a response to any email inquiry regarding their pay.
A third Dallas County Jail officer said that nearly 40 hours of overtime work was left out of their Dec. 6 paycheck — they were instead compensated in compensatory time. The officer described the situation as a “fiasco” and is considering legal recourse.
“Everyone is in an uproar,” the officer said. “These guys are a bunch of crooks and they’re messing with people’s money.”
On Dec. 20, that same officer said they were unable to “look at the details” of their most recent paycheck. While the dollar amount looked higher than their past checks, they said it was difficult to tell whether the payroll problem had been completely corrected.
A fourth officer provided screenshots of a Dallas County employee Facebook group that showed ongoing complaints of payroll errors. Employees who typically receive their paychecks 24 hours early began posting Thursday night that the money hadn’t hit their accounts.
On the morning of Dec. 20, frustrated Facebook posts seemed to confirm that the payroll problems had persisted — albeit to a lesser degree — and the officer said he knew of around a dozen employees whose pay remained incorrect. That officer said his colleagues were able to get checks that day from the payroll department to cover their missing balances, but the continuing inaccurate amounts on employee paychecks was concerning.
After the Dec. 20 paycheck was issued, the Observer reached out to Jenkins and asked how the county was working to address the concerns of individuals whose holiday plans were sacrificed thanks to the missing money. His office confirmed knowing of one employee who had been incorrectly paid that day.
“The employee’s pay has been corrected and funds were already distributed to the individual. If there are others, we have not yet heard about them,” a statement provided by Jenkins said. “Our County Administrator also checked with the Sheriff’s department first thing this morning and they also stated they were not aware of any employees whose pay was not correct with the exception of the one. We are unaware of any additional employees that reported their paycheck was incorrect.”
The fourth officer said their paycheck had been corrected on Dec. 20 and included back pay to cover the missing Dec. 6 balance, but they had a new worry — officers were having trouble verifying their most recent paycheck because their paystubs were unavailable, he said.
“Everything was good on my paycheck. We’ll see how it goes moving forward,” said the third officer, who was also unable to view their paystub. “Now they’re not printing our vacation leave, sick leave or comp leave anymore for viewing. We have to go to the supervisors to try to find out what it is.”
Communication Breakdowns
The Dallas County Commissioners Court approved the new compensatory time policy in August. At a Dec. 17 meeting, in which the paycheck issues occupied more than an hour of back-and-forth discussion, there was a palpable sense of frustration between commissioners and county officials over the matter being brought up once again. Commissioner Elba Garcia noted that she’d received complaints from “lots of employees” who had been affected by the payroll error. She urged Bob Wilson, Dallas County’s human resources director, and Lester Lewis, director of the county’s Enterprise Resources Planning, to provide answers.
“What is the next step to make those employees whole? There is a lot of nervousness, it’s the Christmas season,” Garcia said. “They already had problems with their Thanksgiving paycheck.”
“They already are whole,” Commissioner John Wiley Price countered, stating that the employees had been compensated through compensatory time. According to Price, the onus is on supervisors to modify the payroll system’s default compensatory time setting so that employees receive monetary pay instead.
Officers dispute this. While some told us they individually were responsible for ensuring their hours were coded as overtime pay and not compensatory time, others said their supervisors were “proactive” and took care of it for them.
The officers also said that while they may have technically received a form of compensation as Price insists, it wasn’t the kind that can be used to purchase Thanksgiving dinners or Christmas presents for their families. Furthermore, some officials dispute the county’s claim that the new payroll policy was communicated to them. The Observer asked the county for information regarding what employees were told about the new policy, when that communication took place and whether there is documentation to prove the communication took place, but the information was not available as of publishing.
Sgt. Christopher Dyer, president of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Association, told The Dallas Morning News that supervisors were not made aware of the policy change before it went into effect.
“They made this change but didn’t tell anybody, so all of us are coding it the way we’ve been coding it for 24 years,” Dyer said. “You look at the fact that Dallas County, we’re one of the lowest-paid counties, so things are already bad … then you put this problem on top of that.”
Thompson does not think his supervisors are the ones to blame for the missing money. He said they have been “getting a lot of flak” for the paycheck errors, but he believes that Dallas County officials are trying to scapegoat the people “who actually have our backs.”
Officers did receive some level of communication about their paycheck balances, although emails sent on Nov. 21 and Dec. 6 and shared with the Observer do not address that the apparent error is the result of a policy change. The emails do acknowledge that officers’ pay was “missing” from the paychecks.
“I just left a meeting with the payroll team and they are aware of the issue with overtime pay and actively working with the goal to have missing overtime amounts paid as quickly as possible,” an email sent by Human Resources Director Wilson said.
Thompson said he has not received further communication from the county since the Dec. 6 paycheck, and was not warned that his Dec. 20 check would be short. He was already skeptical that the payroll issues would be remedied anytime soon; now, he has no faith in the system at all. He was one of the hundreds of county employees who were affected by a similar payroll issue during the summer of 2023 and said it took 18 months to get his pay corrected.
“To get [my pay] completely corrected took 18 months because they botched it that bad,” Thompson said. “People are saying ‘We're not waiting 18 months to get our pay that we have already worked for again.’ So a lot of people have been complaining.”
After the Dec. 6 payroll error, the Observer reached out to the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, Commissioners Price and Garcia, and Jenkins to understand what protocols were being put into place to fix officers’ pay. Jenkins’ office was the only one to reply, advising us to contact the county auditor, who oversees payroll.
Calls and emails to the auditor’s office went unanswered.
More of the Same Frustration
Dallas County has experienced payroll woes before. In 2023, the county transitioned to the payroll management system Kronos, but a failed rollout of the system resulted in missing wages for sheriff’s deputies, correctional officers, expert witnesses and attorneys. For weeks, county employees reported paychecks that were missed completely and paychecks that did not reflect overtime hours worked. County employees also said time off and sick leave accruals were incorrectly reported during the period, resulting in inaccurate amounts when employees attempted to record paid time off or sick days.
At the time, unclear procedures for how to report missing pay caused employee frustration to mount. County employees were told to reach out to a payroll hotline or email account, but emails and phone calls went unanswered. The communication confusion seems to be happening again. Since November, Thompson said he has been unable to reach the county via hotline or email.
Though last year’s payroll flub was frustrating, this year’s is insulting, he says, because the missing wages hit what has been a sore spot between county officials and employees for months.
In the summer of 2024, an independent audit found that overtime pay at the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office exceeded $31 million in fiscal year 2024. It took just over two months for the county’s budgeted overtime amount to be met, and the total amount of overtime hours paid out over the fiscal year contributed to the county’s $40 million budget deficit, the audit reported.
In meetings, county commissioners were left scratching their heads over reports that showed employees working 18 hour days, seven days a week. In a Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting over the summer, Commissioner Price reacted to the overtime surplus by warning of “serial abusers” gaming the system.
Just months after the audit, commissioners approved implementing a $500,000 biometric time clock system that will require employees to scan their fingerprint to clock in and out of work.
Thompson admits that officers, including himself, do work long shifts and avoid taking days off. In the pay period ahead of the Dec. 6 paycheck, he’d worked nearly 60 hours of overtime. But high overtime amounts are not evidence of widespread fraud, he said. Instead, jail understaffing and a state-mandated officer-to-inmate ratio has resulted in officers often working past their scheduled hours so the jail can remain compliant.
In 2021, dozens of Dallas County Jail officers protested outside of the Frank Crowley Courthouse after staffing shortages resulted in officers working 16-hour days, multiple days in a row. The officers said they were “mandated” to work the overtime to meet state requirements.
Three years later, Thompson said talks of a strike or walkout had resurfaced, calmed only by the money that began to trickle out of the county in mid-December. Although he loves his job, he has had to ask himself if the anguish and uncertainty over his paychecks is worth it.
“Dallas County has a whole lot of good officers who have been there. We've worked through COVID, we've worked through monkey pox, we've worked through the times where they said they were worried about Ebola coming into the nation,” Thompson said. “We've had officers die from COVID and everybody's been stepping up, but stuff like this keeps happening.”
