For years, Orange County sheriff deputies and local police departments have dominated municipal budgets, often making up over half of most cities annual general fund spending and typically serving as the largest department.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, city and county leaders are grappling with how to afford raises for their most expensive employees amid growing structural budget deficits, with stagnant or shrinking tax revenue amid rising costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Facing Uncertain Financial Futures<\/p>\n
In the past, police unions haven\u2019t often had to fight publicly for raises in Orange County, with most city councils quietly approving a new contract with raises every few years and moving on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But many Orange County cities and the county government itself are grappling with increasingly imbalanced budgets, often floated through reserves and other one-time funding \u2013 like property sales \u2013 to cover ongoing expenses that keep growing each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Read: How Rocky Are Orange County\u2019s Municipal Budgets?<\/a>]<\/p>\n Those growing deficits are prompting some tough conversations for city and county leaders as union contracts wrap up, with some municipalities offering limited raises while others contemplate whether they can afford a major hike at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the past decade, a Voice of OC review found that as many city budgets continued expanding, their spending on the police department has increased at an almost equal rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the size of Anaheim\u2019s general fund has grown 85% since the 2015 budget, the police department budget has grown 84% according to city budget records.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cities like Costa Mesa and Garden Grove saw similar growth, with their police growing at a rate slightly below that of the general fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other cities, the police department budget grew faster than the general fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n Irvine\u2019s spending on police nearly doubled over the past 10 years according to budget records, outpacing the city\u2019s general fund growth by 10%.\u00a0<\/p>\n A small number of cities also saw their police budgets grow at a significantly slower rate than their general fund, including Santa Ana and Huntington Beach.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a host of cities are asking voters to increase taxes at the November ballot box \u2013 including sales and hotel taxes \u2013 as city officials struggle to keep municipal budgets afloat.\u00a0<\/p>\n [Read: Election 2026: OC Cities Ask for Tax Increases, Term Limits and More<\/a>]<\/p>\n At the same time cities increased their spending, violent crime has dropped over the past ten years, with an increase in drug offenses in that same time frame according to countywide data from the California Department of Justice<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Fear of Being Left Behind\u00a0<\/p>\n The argument from most police union leaders has been the same for over a decade \u2013 without raises, officers will go to neighboring cities, leaving the police department understaffed and forcing an overreliance on overtime.\u00a0<\/p>\n That argument was on full display in Huntington Beach during public comment at a September city council meeting.<\/p>\n Several police officers shared concerns that without a raise, they\u2019d begin losing officers to other departments as they asked for an 18% raise over the next three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sgt. William Brownlee, who manages the Huntington Beach Police Department\u2019s recruitment unit, noted that many of the officers they hire live outside the county to save money and that if they can take a job that\u2019s 15 minutes away instead of two to three hours that offers better pay, they will.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCompensation and benefits matter when experienced officers decide where to work,\u201d Brownlee said. \u201cWe cannot ignore this reality. Our current compensation ranks 12th among Orange County law enforcement agencies. Remaining competitive means attracting qualified recruits.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But several city council members brought up concerns with the proposed raise amid growing budget deficits, with Mayor Casey McKeon encouraging his colleagues to vote down the contract amid the competition between cities for officers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEach city then competes and gives higher raises \u2026 it\u2019s not sustainable,\u201d McKeon said. \u201cAt some point, some city has to have strong financial prudence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Council members voted 4-3 to move forward with the contract. Read: Huntington Beach Approves Police Raises Amid Budget Deficit Projections<\/a><\/p>\n County Sheriffs Stuck Negotiating with Supervisors\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs is one of the most powerful unions in Orange County politics, and spent over $2 million in the past four years on ads supporting all five county supervisors\u2019 campaigns.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under their last contract, sheriffs deputies received roughly 18% of raises from 2023 to 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n They have not moved forward on county supervisors\u2019 offer for a one year contract with a 3% increase, a contract several of the county\u2019s other public employee unions accepted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Read: Orange County\u2019s Cold War on Labor: Frozen Vacancies and Limited Raises<\/a><\/p>\n Those raises come even as the county is staring down growing structural budget deficits, with the last budget county supervisors approved relying on around $75 million in one time funding to balance out, most of which came out of the county\u2019s reserves.\u00a0<\/p>\n OC Supervisor Don Wagner said there\u2019s no way the county can offer something better.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI believe we have hit a ceiling,\u201d Wagner wrote in a Sept. 10 statement. \u201cI don\u2019t have any idea which of my colleagues share that opinion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Supervisor Janet Nguyen declined to comment on the raises but said she \u201calways supported\u201d the sheriff\u2019s deputies, while Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Doug Chaffee declined to comment altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n Supervisor Katrina Foley did not return requests for comment and the sheriff\u2019s deputies union has spent nearly $286,000 advertising her campaign this year alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n The sheriff\u2019s union did not respond to requests for comment and haven\u2019t disclosed spending any money on candidates for county supervisor since the end of the June primary, according to filings as of Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n The sheriff deputies\u2019 pay increases can also hit hard for over a dozen cities that contract with the sheriff\u2019s department, including Dana Point, San Clemente and Mission Viejo, who regularly see their service contracts bumped up to keep up with raises.\u00a0<\/p>\n City leaders for all the cities that contracted with the sheriff\u2019s department in 2017 launched a study to look at leaving or possibly consolidating services, but the results were never made public.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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