Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller Tuesday criticized what he said were factual errors and untrue statements in a report by a county civil grand jury released Monday about excess overtime pay earned by his deputies.

In its report Monday, the county's Civil Grand Jury for 2012 singled out the sheriff's office and its Emergency Communications Services as having “an excessive level of overtime relative to their payroll.”

The sheriff's office had an overtime budget of $3,078,941 for 2011-2012 but spent $4,167,081, which was 35 percent over budget, the jury said.

The county's Jail Operations Department, under the sheriff's office, spent $1,934,921 on overtime or 77 percent over budget, the panel reported.

But in a letter sent Tuesday to Monterey County Superior Court Judge Marla Anderson, who received the jury's report, Miller said he was “extremely disappointed in the factual inaccuracies contained” in it and complained that as a department head, he was not even consulted by the jurors.

While the panel claimed that jurors investigated overtime pay with the heads of five Monterey county departments and then “concentrated” on the sheriff's office and emergency communications, they in fact did not talk to him, Miller said.

“As Sheriff of Monterey County, I am the Department Head of the Sheriff's Department,” Miller said. “I was never contacted by, nor did I ever meet with, the 2012 Civil Grand Jury on the issue of overtime, although I would have enthusiastically done so.”

The jury failed to mention that he had saved $500,000 in salary and other department cutbacks last year, such as from putting out inmate medical services at the county jail to competitive bid for the first time in 27 years, Miller said.

But much of the need for deputy overtime pay can be traced to major reductions by the county in the numbers of deputies on patrol and in the jail in recent years, Miller said.

“The most troubling aspect of these inaccuracies is that (they misrepresent) what continues to be a significant issue in the sheriff's office,” Miller said.

“Over the past ten years, over seventy deputy sheriff positions have been eliminated,” he said.

“If we had not lost these positions, and if the county exercised more initiative in managing Worker's Compensation claims, overtime use in the Sheriff's Office would not be a major issue.”

“It should come as no surprise that the amount of overtime hours worked at the County Jail is most directly the result of severe budget and staff reductions over the past several years,” he said.

One of the jury's recommendations was that the sheriff's office cap overtime for deputies to 56 hours per week, a policy that jurors claimed that Miller had discussed last July “but nothing has been implemented as of October 2012.”

But the jury is wrong, Miller said, because “the '56 hour rule' was implemented” by him in May, 2012 and modified in August “to limit the number of hours a deputy could work” to maintain their physical and mental health.

The jury misstated that sheriff's deputies' regular schedules involve two shifts of 12 hours and two eight-hour shifts for a 40-hour week, when Miller said patrol and jail deputies work more arduous hours -- seven shifts of 12 hours each and one eight-hour shift over a two-week pay period.

Miller complained that the jury unfairly implied that his and other county departments, in the jury's words, define their “own rules regarding overtime, insurance and benefits, hours of work and scheduling, sick leave, vacation pay, time off, among other things.”

But all of those pay-related things are covered by employee union contracts or county policy approved by the Board of Supervisors, leaving departments with very little discretion, Miller said.

The sheriff, in an interview, said that the jury's separate report on overcrowding and other issues at the county jail “was flimsy, too,” but that he would address that part later.

Miller, who plans to present his response to the grand jury's findings on overtime pay to the county Board of Supervisors on Feb. 12, said that jurors were remiss in not talking to him before issuing their report.

“They know where I work,” he said. “This calls into question much of the rest of their results.”