A few months ago I wrote about a U.S. Department of Labor Investigation into the City of Saratoga Springs (I'm not providing a link, of course, because the article appears to have been purged from our website). The long and the short of it is that the DOL sent the city a letter requesting a slew of payroll data, which the city government had to run around and collect.

At the time, Leo (I didn't write down his last name when I first talked to him, and, of course, I can't find the story, so we're going with "Leo"), who is a DOL spokesperson, told me that he could neither confirm nor deny any investigation by the wages and hours division of the department.

Today, a DOL official who spoke to me only on background told me that the investigation is not a big deal and involves only a small number of employees and a couple hundred dollars. The investigation should be concluded in a few weeks, at which time I'll hopefully have more to report to you. In the mean time, it makes you wonder why the federal labor department was so interested in such a seemingly small infraction.