Which of the following employees did the state pay the most last year?

A. The governor.

B. The superintendent of the state police.

C. A guard at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

D. A nursing supervisor in the Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals.

E. The president of the University of Rhode Island.

F. The chief justice of the Supreme Court.

G. A child-support technician at the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

The answer is D.

Before taxes last year, Allan R. LeBeau was paid $214,776.78. That’s $88,537.72 in base pay, plus $126,239.06 in overtime. He is a supervising registered nurse at the MHRH division that runs Eleanor Slater Hospital and several group homes.

Those figures are according to a list of state employee earnings obtained by The Providence Journal under the state’s Open Records Law. Under a similar request, The Journal obtained a list of state employee salaries, which was detailed in a report in yesterday’s newspaper. The paper requested the lists to take a closer look at the cost of state government as state leaders have been debating issues such as layoffs and the privatizing of some state jobs.

The earnings list includes 28,353 state employees who received any pay at any time during calendar year 2006. It ranges from a URI student who put in half an hour at a work-study job last year and made $3.95 to several full-time employees making more than $200,000.

LeBeau’s $126,000-plus in overtime ranked him at the top of the list for overtime paid last year. It also put him among the 209 state employees who earned more in overtime than in base pay. (The 209 excludes four employees whose base pay was less than $500.)

But it didn’t place him at the top of the list for total earnings. In fact, it placed him third.

The top spot went to James E. Baron, the men’s basketball coach at URI. His earnings totaled $301,324.03 last year, $281,324.03 in base pay and $20,000 that was listed as overtime, which a university spokeswoman attributed to a scheduling bonus in his contract. Factoring in health, dental and vision insurance, the state’s share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, and the state’s contribution to Baron’s retirement plan, the basketball coach cost Rhode Islanders $349,702.58 last year. During that time, his team won 15 games and lost 16.

Baron was away on a recruiting trip last week, too busy working to discuss what it’s like to be the state’s top-paid employee.

Number two on the list was Albert Sevigny, who was paid $251,890.21, all of it in base pay. But Sevigny is a special case. He retired in June 2006 after nearly 30 years with the state. He worked at the Community College of Rhode Island, where he was the controller, overseeing financial accounts. He also taught computer courses at the college and had assumed some of the duties of the vice president for business affairs when that position was vacant, according to a college spokeswoman. The bulk of his pay last year — $133,178.62 — was for accumulated sick and vacation pay, as well as deferred pay from the state budget crisis during the Sundlun administration in the early 1990s.

By several measures, MHRH was at or near the top of the list in use of overtime last year. Five of the top 10 overtime earners worked for MHRH and 43 of the top 100. (The Department of Corrections had 50 of the top 100.)

MHRH Director Ellen R. Nelson said that, at least to some degree, overtime is unavoidable in an agency that is responsible for providing around-the-clock patient care every day of the year. “You can’t have any downtime,” she said. “I can’t not have coverage.”

Still, she has instituted policies to try to rein in overtime, such as limiting who is eligible. “Unless you’re doing direct patient care, you’re not going to get overtime.”

She also said she would like to hire additional staff in certain positions to reduce the department’s reliance on overtime. But, she said, as the governor is looking to reduce the size of the state work force, that may be difficult.

Of the 209 employees who made more in overtime than in base pay, 92 were from MHRH, the most in any department. Corrections is second, with 86 employees making more overtime than base, followed by DCYF, with 13, and the state colleges, with 9. All other departments had three or fewer; most had none.

MHRH has three job categories where the average worker’s pay was boosted at least 50 percent by overtime. Mental-health workers made an average of about $23,200 in overtime, a 56-percent boost to base pay of about $35,100. Community living aides averaged about $18,100 in overtime, 54-percent above base pay of about $31,800. Psychiatric institutional attendants averaged about $17,800 in overtime, 51 percent on top of base pay of about $32,200.

MHRH also has the overtime champ in terms of percentage of base pay. Pauline L. Howard made more than twice as much money last year in overtime as she did in base pay. Her $40,528.28 in base pay as a community living aide, someone who assists residents at a group home for the mentally retarded, was augmented by $96,118.45 in overtime for a total of $136,646.73. Her overtime was 237 percent of her base pay.

The department that, on average, has the biggest overtime earners is the Department of Corrections, where the average employee added 35 percent to base pay last year. Corrections is followed by MHRH, at 26 percent; DCYF, at 17 percent; Transportation at 14 percent, and the Executive Department, at 12 percent. Two departments, Elderly Affairs and Business Regulation, paid no overtime last year.

Corrections Director Ashbel T. Wall cited similar forces behind his department’s use of overtime as the MHRH director did.

“We have to supervise inmates in institutions on a 24/7 basis, and we need to fill the posts to do that,” Wall said. “We have a soaring inmate census. We’re setting record highs.”

Richard Ferruccio, president of the union that represents correctional officers, blamed the high overtime on management. “There’s an extreme shortage of correctional officers.”

Wall countered that, because of vacations, sick time, training and similar absences, open shifts are bound to occur. “It’s more cost-effective to use overtime to plug those gaps when an officer can’t be on-post than to hire additional staff,” he said. “We strive to achieve the right balance between the number of staff and the amount of overtime.”

Ferruccio said that some correctional officers see overtime as the only way to earn enough money to support their families. “We have a lot of guys chase the overtime because they depend on it.” Others, though, try to avoid it. “It’s an incredible amount of time away from their families.”

Some of the departmental overtime percentage figures can be misleading.

As an example, the Executive Department, whose overall percentage was 12 percent, includes the state police. State police employees collected, on average, 22 percent of their base pay in overtime. During the same period, the rest of the employees in the Executive Department averaged 4 percent. Governor Carcieri was not paid any overtime last year, as was true for the other general officers.

State police overtime is also problematic for another reason: troopers can earn two types of “overtime,” one of which is counted as part of base pay in the list the state provided to The Journal. When a trooper works “barracks overtime,” such as picking up an extra shift, that is paid at time and a half and counted as overtime. But traffic details, such as at a highway construction site, are paid a set hourly rate and counted as base pay. Because some of what many would consider overtime is counted as base pay, the overtime percentage for troopers is artificially low.

Another department with a disparity in overtime percentages, though not as marked as the Executive Department, is Transportation, whose overall percentage was 14 percent. But that breaks down to maintenance workers who were paid 24 percent in overtime and all other workers, who were paid 10 percent.

When looking at salary alone, the 10 top-paid people in the Department of Corrections are all administrators, such as director Wall, medical director Michael T. Poshkus and the wardens of the several prisons at the ACI. But, when overtime is factored in, eight of the 10 top earners are correctional officers, including two captains, one lieutenant and five rank-and-file guards. Poshkus and Wall, who are first and second in terms of salary, drop to fifth and sixth in terms of total earnings.

The top earner in Corrections last year was Frank E. Cook, a correctional officer captain. He had total earnings of $169,203.46, with $67,788.17 in base pay and $101,415.29 in overtime.

The mean average pay, including overtime, for the 866 rank-and-file correctional officers last year was $59,668.19. With benefits, federal taxes and retirement thrown in, the average cost to the state was $82,444.98. But those averages result from a broad range of pay. The top earnings among correctional officers was $146,812.02 for William C. Distasio, who had base pay of $44,508.88 and overtime of $102,303.14.

pparker@projo.com