The Lackawanna County Prison successfully slashed overtime costs in the first half of the year, with 2025 overtime down by more than 50% through the pay period ending July 1 compared to the same point in 2024.
This year’s prison overtime as of the July 1 pay period, the thirteenth of 2025, totaled about $668,070. That’s a roughly 57% decrease from the $1.56 million in overtime costs accrued through 13 pay periods last year, when total prison overtime for the year ultimately reached $2.9 million. It also puts the prison on pace to come in dramatically below the $2.5 million officials budgeted for prison overtime in 2025.
For more context, overtime costs exceeded $100,000 in nine of the prison’s first 13 pay periods of 2024, often considerably so. But the prison has yet to record a pay period in 2025 where overtime reached $100,000, and is averaging just about $51,390 in overtime costs per pay period so far this year.
It’s welcome news for the county still facing serious financial headwinds following a roughly 33% property tax hike — approved by Democratic Commissioner Bill Gaughan and former Democratic Commissioner Matt McGloin over Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak’s objections — and other corrective actions taken to avert a fiscal crisis marked by a massive structural deficit. Savings anywhere are important as the county’s 2025 budget effectively balances to zero, leaving officials with little breathing room on the revenue side of the ledger this year.
To that end, officials from PFM Group Consulting LLC, the grant-supported consulting firm that authored a long-term county financial management plan officials are moving to implement, have called on the county to curtail personnel costs. The plan includes recommended cost-reduction strategies related to the county’s criminal justice system — the prison, the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office — which accounted for about 46% of county general fund expenditures last year.
Gaughan complimented Warden Tim Betti at last week’s county prison board meeting for the successful reduction in overtime expenses.
“So if you remember last year, when we were all pulling our hair out because of the financial disaster that I walked into, we said we have to get this overtime down,” Gaughan said, thanking Betti and his administrative staff for “taking everything we said seriously and instituting several measures” that have helped reduce overtime by nearly $900,000 so far this year compared to last. “All the things we’re doing are making a difference. We know that overtime is a necessary evil, but we have it under control at the prison. It can be done.”
A subsequent county press release details several factors contributing to the reduction, including efforts by the commissioners, prison administration and county Human Resources Department to minimize the number of staff vacancies at the jail.
Warden Tim Betti presents his report during the Lackawanna County Prison board meeting at the prison in Scranton on Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
“We have been filling part-time officer positions more aggressively than in the past,” Betti said in the release. “We use those part-time officers to fill in for the shifts of full-time officers who are out on workers’ compensation and to fill in for full-time vacancies.”
Among other operations and policy changes implemented in the interest of cost reduction, prison officials increased the time required for corrections officers to notify management of their use of vacation time, enabling better shift planning. Improved tracking of inmates’ statuses ensuring timely releases and other population-monitoring initiatives have also enabled the prison to close one minimum security unit, the release notes.
“I get that the big headline last year was the substantial tax increase that we had to pass to eliminate the massive structural deficit we found when we took office,” Gaughan said in the release. “But we also implemented substantial management and operational reforms and tasked our department heads with doing better. The warden and his staff are demonstrating that it can be done. If this performance holds for the remainder of the year, it will be a major help with the 2026 budget.”