Manatee County underpaid emergency medical service workers by at least $336,607 over a recent nine-month period after its payroll system failed to properly calculate overtime, according to an audit obtained by Suncoast Searchlight.
The audit found that more than 200 EMS employees were owed back pay between June 28 and March 30. Some workers were shorted a few hundred dollars. Others were owed thousands. One veteran paramedic was underpaid by $9,000.
The county launched the audit in response to workers’ complaints about the paycheck discrepancies, according to Lori Stephens, a CPA in the Inspector General’s Office. The investigation found the county’s payroll vendor, UKG, was “not correctly counting hours worked toward the calculation of overtime” as required by the collective bargaining agreement…