Hawaii lawmakers want help from the auditor to scrutinize excessive overtime use across state departments.

But it turns out that getting the numbers straight is no easy task.

A Senate resolution calling for an audit cites two examples of public employees logging “extensive amounts” of overtime that boosted both their take-home pay and public pensions.

One of those examples is based on a 2010 Civil Beat investigation that uncovered large overtime claims at the state Department of Public Safety.

Civil Beat requested the names and positions of all DPS employees who claimed at least 1,000 hours of overtime in fiscal 2009 and 2010, as well as how much the department paid out in overtime claims.

After we published our “Surcharge on Safety” series, subsequent conversations with the department revealed that the documents we were provided listed hours paid, not physically worked. Because employees were paid time-and-a-half, they could have worked as little as 667 hours to be paid for 1,000 hours.

Records showed 16 DPS employees worked at least 1,000 hours of overtime in a single year.

As for those paid for at least 1,000 hours of overtime, there were 68 in fiscal 2009, and 25 in fiscal 2010.

The Legislature itself made the same mistake in its resolution that Civil Beat made in its original article.

It wrote: “Whereas, at the state Department of Public Safety, which runs the prison system and has between 2,200 and 2,400 workers, seventy-five employees worked more than 1,000 hours of overtime in fiscal year 2009 and twenty-five did so the following year — the equivalent of 125 eight-hour work days.”

It’s true that another local newspaper did report that 75 DPS employees “worked” more than 1,000 hours in fiscal 2009, and 25 in 2010, attributing that to the DPS.

But that’s again an example of confusion about what those overtime hours represent.

It goes to show how complicated these calculations can be, when even the Legislature itself can’t keep the numbers straight.