While other City Hall departments are all forced to cut back in deficit times, the SF Sheriff\u2019s Office is clocking another year of out-of-control overtime, in a familiar story of SF law enforcement’s overtime overkill. <\/p>\n
It has been a years-long constant of modern-day San Francisco that SFPD officers and SF Sheriff\u2019s Office deputies pull in rather obscene amounts of overtime pay<\/a>. Plenty of audits have found abuse of the overtime system<\/a>, but several consecutive mayors and SF Boards of Supervisors just keep on approving that cop overtime<\/a>, making police and sheriff\u2019s deputies consistently among SF\u2019s highest-paid public employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n And surprise, the SF Sheriff\u2019s Office has done it again. Mission Local reports that the Sheriff’s Office has already blown its overtime budget for the current fiscal year<\/a>, even though we are just two-thirds of the way through the current fiscal year. So at current place, the SF Sheriff\u2019s Office is set to go $19 million over their OT budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year.<\/p>\n This information originally comes from a Monday SF Controller\u2019s Office memo and assessment<\/a> on overtime in the SF Sheriff\u2019s office.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department has expended $30.3 million of its $31.7 million General Fund overtime budget,\u201d the SF Controller\u2019s Office said in that memo. \u201cThe Department has spent $36.4 million of its $41.2 million budget. Based on a straight-line projection, which does not account for the impact of either new hires or seasonal demands on overtime usage, the Department is on pace to spend approximately $60.2 million in overtime by the end of the fiscal year, or approximately $19 million above budget.\u201d<\/p>\n Mind you, this comes when Mayor Daniel Lurie is demanding that other city departments lay people off<\/a> and make sweeping cuts to the city services<\/a>. As Mission Local points out, the very day the Controller’s Office put out that memo, Lurie was demanding the Department of Public Health lop $40 million off its budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Sheriff’s Office insists that they won\u2019t have to ask for more overtime money, despite that they\u2019ve blown their whole wad with four months left in the fiscal year, because they can employ creative accounting. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Sheriff\u2019s Office plans to request a reappropriation supplemental in the amount of $17.7M into overtime from salary and benefits, which reflects existing savings within our current budget, including vacancy cost savings, salary and benefit adjustments, and savings associated with the conversion of certain positions from CalPERS to SFERS,\u201d the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement to Mission Local<\/a>. “This request does not represent new funding, but rather the reallocation of savings from other areas of our budget.\u201d<\/p>\n That all sounds complicated, and maybe it\u2019s a dodge, though maybe it will work for everyone! The Sheriff\u2019s Office insists they\u2019ve improved recruiting, and staffing is up. But maybe do not be surprised if the SF Sheriff comes asking for more overtime money sometime in the next four months.<\/p>\n