Mike Foley, Auditor of Public Accounts
NOTE: This story has been updated with additional details and comments after the Auditor’s Office posted the complete letter available here
Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley is urging the City of Lincoln to conduct a performance audit of Lincoln Fire and Rescue’s staffing and scheduling practices after the department paid more than $7.2 million in overtime during 2025.
The Auditor’s Office examined City payroll records after receiving concerns about LFR overtime and the apparent inactivity of Lincoln’s Performance Audit Committee.
Following its preliminary work, the Auditor’s Office determined that a separate financial audit or attestation was not necessary. It did, however, identify an overtime overpayment, a disagreement over supporting documentation and years of inactivity by the City’s performance-audit committee.
“Properly staffing and scheduling a top-notch fire department is a complex challenge,” Foley said. While praising LFR’s professionalism, Foley said $7.2 million in overtime during a single year warranted an objective review that could potentially identify taxpayer savings.
Regular schedule automatically generates overtime
LFR operates 16 stations that must maintain a minimum staffing level of 92 firefighting personnel. About 87% of its employees are classified as working 56 hours per week.
Those employees generally work alternating 24-hour shifts during the first 13 days of a recurring 21-day cycle, followed by eight days off. That schedule produces 168 hours over three weeks.
Under federal overtime rules applying to public fire-protection employees, overtime begins after 159 hours during that 21-day period. Consequently, employees working all their regularly scheduled shifts automatically earn nine hours of overtime during each cycle.
The Auditor calculated that automatic overtime amounted to $2,031,951 in 2025—approximately 28.2% of LFR’s total overtime expense.
Other overtime can result from staffing shortages, training, work performed after a regular shift or disaster deployments involving Nebraska Task Force One.
Overtime down slightly from 2024
LFR personnel received $7,205,478 in overtime during 2025. That was approximately $88,800 less than the $7,294,250 paid in 2024 but about $1.13 million more than the $6,080,193 paid in 2023.
Approximately 92% of the 2025 overtime went to employees classified as working 56 hours per week. The remaining 8% went to employees assigned to 40-hour schedules, including some training, maintenance and administrative personnel.
The 100 employees receiving the most overtime averaged $45,586 in overtime and $160,584 in total gross pay.
The top 25 averaged $72,247 in overtime, bringing their average total compensation to $189,342.
According to the report’s employee-by-employee payroll table, the largest overtime recipient—a fire apparatus operator classified as working 40 hours per week—received $164,176.98 in overtime and $277,192.54 in total gross pay.
The report identifies employees by job title rather than by name.
Auditor finds $610.98 overpayment
The Auditor’s Office selected 10 employees and examined two payroll periods for each. The sample included seven employees assigned to 56-hour schedules and three assigned to 40-hour schedules.
The review found that one 40-hour employee lacked documentation that the Auditor considered adequate to explain the necessity of the overtime.
The same employee received 9.75 hours of overtime and eight hours of vacation pay on May 6, 2025, producing compensation for 17.75 hours that day. The overtime payment totaled $610.98.
LFR management acknowledged that the simultaneous vacation and overtime payment was an error. The City said it recovered the overpayment and would assess its payroll controls to prevent similar cases.
The City disputed the Auditor’s separate conclusion that the employee’s overtime lacked adequate documentation.
City officials said the employee’s time was entered and approved by a supervisor through the City’s Oracle personnel system. According to the City, separate overtime-submission forms are required for 56-hour employees but not for employees working 40-hour schedules.
The Auditor’s Office maintained that the information in the Oracle system was too limited to verify why the additional hours were necessary. It recommended that the City require adequate justification for all overtime and prevent employees from receiving overtime and applicable leave pay on the same day.
The Auditor’s report warns that insufficient controls increase the risk of improper payments resulting from error or fraud. It does not accuse the employee or LFR of fraud.
Disaster costs can be reimbursed
Thirty-seven LFR members participated in Nebraska Task Force One deployments during 2025. Missions included wildfires in Custer County, severe weather in Tennessee and the Ohio Valley, flooding in Texas and Washington and a building collapse in Fremont.
LFR told the Auditor that it received approximately $1 million in reimbursements related to task-force deployments and another $200,000 for FEMA grants and training during the year.
Those reimbursements can cover deployed personnel and employees filling vacancies created by the deployments. LFR said full reimbursement can take an unpredictable amount of time and that some money connected to the July 2025 Texas flooding deployment remained outstanding.
The letter does not establish that the entire $1.2 million should be subtracted directly from the reported overtime total because some of that money covered expenses other than overtime.
City agrees audit committee has been inactive
Foley also criticized the inactivity of Lincoln’s Performance Audit Committee.
Lincoln’s Municipal Code requires the committee to meet at least quarterly. It also directs the City Council to select at least one audit subject each year by August 31.
The City’s Finance Department provided committee minutes only through July 27, 2021. One committee member told the Auditor that they could not remember an actual performance audit being completed since 2015.
The Auditor concluded that the committee appears not to have met in more than five years and that its failure to perform audits or meet regularly is inconsistent with the Municipal Code.
The City agreed with that finding.
In its formal response, the City acknowledged that the committee has been inactive for more than five years and said it is committed to reactivating it. The City said the Council adopted a resolution on August 31 formally initiating engagement with the committee.
Foley recommended that the committee resume quarterly meetings and fulfill its performance-auditing responsibilities. He specifically suggested examining employee overtime and LFR’s shift-scheduling model.
Foley emphasized that the recommendation was not a criticism of the services firefighters provide.
“We all owe a debt of gratitude to the members of the LFR for their outstanding service to the community,” Foley said. “Those courageous men and women deserve to be compensated well for protecting us—often at great personal risk—from fires and other hazards.”