Is Philadelphia blowing overtime budget already?

City Controller is sounding the alarm. Mayor Nutter says numbers from the first quarter can be overcome.

Philadelphia’s City Controller has issued what he considers a troubling report on overtime in the budget year’s first quarter. The mayor says there’s still time to get overtime costs under control.

Controller Alan Butkovitz says Philadelphia Fire Department overtime is $1 million over budget and police overtime is $500,000 ahead of this time a year ago. Mayor Michael Nutter says it’s too soon to know if they are busting the budget.

“It would be like reporting the first quarter results of a basketball game, it’s the first quarter. Budgets are done on an annual basis as everyone knows, and we took $10 million out of overtime last year.”

Controller Butkovitz says falling behind now makes the goal even harder to attain.

“Which means the amount of savings per month has to be greater than it was originally projected by about 30 percent.”

The controller says that is difficult to achieve, the mayor says the city will do what it can to make its budget numbers.