PINELLAS, Fla. — Two Pinellas County Public Works employees are no longer with the county after an inspector general’s investigation found evidence of unapproved overtime and discrepancies between reported work hours and available records.

The investigation began with an anonymous tip to the Pinellas County Inspector General’s Office about high overtime earnings by a Public Works operations manager between January and May 2025, according to Assistant Inspector General Darcy Eckert.

“The overtime we looked into and we saw, ‘Yep, he’s got a significant amount of overtime,’” Eckert said. “We spoke with the director of the department and we knew that they would’ve had to have approved that overtime and they had not, so then we knew that there was at least something there.”

Investigators expanded their review to include timecards, building badge swipes, county computer logins and work completed through the county’s Cityworks program, according to the inspector general’s report.

The report found that the employee recorded more than 1,000 overtime hours between August 2024 and October 2025. The employee’s regular hourly rate was $40, and overtime was paid at $60 an hour.

Investigators tried to determine whether the employee worked the hours he reported. For 2024, the only records the inspector general could use to verify work were Cityworks records, which showed the employee logged on 47 of the 118 days reviewed, or about 40%.

After analyzing 2025 data, the inspector general found the employee reported working at least eight days with no activity in the available records.

“Now, we are very conservative when we conclude,” Eckert said. “This doesn’t mean he was working a full eight hours in any given day, that just means he happened to log in that day. So we know that that’s not telling us necessarily the whole story, but at least we can give credit that, ‘Hey, he did something for work that day.’”

The report also found that the overtime had not been approved, nor had a three-day work-from-home schedule for childcare reasons.

According to the inspector general’s report, the manager admitted that after a few days at home, he did not have much work. The report says he started watching YouTube videos on ponds and reading books on invasive species while being paid at least $40 an hour.

“It was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday that he was allowed to work from home for a set period,” Eckert said. “He had zero work orders closed in those days.”

Ben Wilcox, research director for Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan government watchdog group based in Tallahassee, said the findings show why oversight of public agencies matters.

“This is the public’s tax dollars that’re being spent,” Wilcox said.

The public works director told investigators that if the complainant had not come forward, she likely would not have known about the overtime, according to the report.

“When it’s a public employee, that person is being paid with public funds — taxpayer funds — and there needs to be oversight and there needs to be procedures that’re followed,” Wilcox said.

Wilcox said the inspector general’s findings raise concerns about accountability.

“There are a number of red flags that’re raised in this inspector general’s report, and I think there needs to be accountability and transparency in how it’s dealt with,” Wilcox said.

According to the report, the manager resigned before a scheduled disciplinary hearing. The report also says the supervisor was terminated during the investigation for unspecified reasons.

Pinellas County Public Works has since developed new ways to approve and monitor overtime hours.

“When things like this are happening, we want to be able to report on it, so number one it can be known, it can be corrected in whatever way the county deems necessary, and also to try and prevent it from ever happening again,” Eckert said.

The county declined a request for an interview with the Public Works Department and referred Spectrum Bay News 9 to the inspector general’s report.

Public Works is working with the county attorney and human resources to determine whether any overtime payments can be recovered.