San Francisco's Overtime King Shows How Public Service Isn't About Altruism

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the special class of workers:

When it comes to city overtime, year in and year out no one beats Eric Cranston, a security sergeant at San Francisco General Hospital who managed to earn more than $200,000 in 2006 by working more hours than one might think humanly possible.

According to city payroll records, Cranston, a 53-year-old institutional police officer attached to the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, earned $121,937 in overtime pay last year at $63.31 an hour.

Add in premium and holiday pay and assorted other enhancers to his base salary of $78,128, and Cranston's total for the year came to $220,251.

To do that, Cranston worked 1,926 hours of overtime. That works out to about 7 1/2 hours a day, every day of the workweek, 52 weeks a year.

And while such a workload might seem impossible, for Cranston it's pretty much par for the course.

In fact, he worked even more in 2005, when he clocked in 2,499 hours of overtime. That pencils out to a second full-time job, and then some.

In 2003, Cranston worked 2,515 hours of overtime.

In 2002, it was 2,514 hours.

The only break Cranston appears to have taken was in 2004, when he put in for a mere 1,599 hours of OT.

Even that year, however, Cranston managed to make $25,000 more than his boss, Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who now earns $131,000 -- with no overtime.

We called the hospital and asked Cranston how he managed to work so much, but he politely declined to talk, explaining, "I'm on duty."

Gee,couldn't San Francisco get someone to do the job for cheaper?