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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Department of Public Safety has asked for more funding for the Utah Highway Patrol. The Department of Public Safety is petitioning the legislature for $1 million to fund the troopers' overtime hours.
Dwayne Baird, the Department of Public Safety spokesman, has said that the UHP is in need of funding due to the large amount of overtime the trooper's were required to work during 2012. The number of wildfires and winter storms required the officers to work a lot of overtime hours.
"On all the holidays we call out extra troopers," Baird said. "Just recently with all the winter storms we had all through January and the ice storm, we called out for extra overtime shifts. We had 464 troopers just for that month."
However, Baird reported that the UHP was already appropriated a one time $1 million fund for overtime from the Department of Public Safety two years ago. The UHP was 45 troopers short due to attrition during 2012, so the funding was sufficient to cover the overtime of the officers.
At the end of November, UHP was able to hire the needed 45 troopers, and Baird said that as a result, the extra funding that had been used for the overtime pay could be depleted by July 2013.
"We aren't short at this point, but we could be if we don't get the funding we need," Baird said. "We could be short on funding by the middle to the end of the year depending on what the needs are to have the troopers called on overtime."