The Orange County Sheriffs\u2019 Department overran their budget by $77 million in the last three years combined \u2013 including a nearly $30 million overrun this past fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Those cost overruns are the highest of any department in the county according to year-end budget reports, which show that the $17 million overage reported from the Social Services Agency in that same time frame came in second place for the last fiscal year.<\/p>\n
But the sheriff\u2019s department insists those aren\u2019t overruns: their budget is built underfunded so officials have to request more money from the supervisors in an effort to keep costs down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo start the year the CEO\u2019s office underfunds our budget,\u201d said Brian Wayt, executive director of the sheriff\u2019s administrative services command. \u201cThis is a strategy they use to kind of keep pressure on certain departments to do what they can to keep costs in check.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when asked what other departments face that pressure point, Wayt said he was only aware of the sheriff\u2019s department facing that requirement, noting they\u2019d always expected to run over their budget last year by $30 million and they had less overruns than anticipated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t overrun, we actually underran by a couple million but on paper it looks like we overran,\u201d Wayt said. \u201cIt\u2019s a strategy the CEO\u2019s office has decided to take and the sheriff and I have worked pretty closely with Michelle and Frank in the past to go along with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a similar argument to what sheriff officials claimed last year when they overran<\/a> their budget, which Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento highlighted at the time, saying the sheriffs didn\u2019t do enough to inform supervisors about the overruns, a statement the sheriffs disputed at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n This year, Sarmiento also questioned the overruns from the sheriff\u2019s department in a brief statement on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the economic realities we are facing as a County, it is critical that all departments, including the Sheriff, function within their budgets,\u201d Sarmiento wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Supervisor Janet Nguyen declined to comment, and none of the other county supervisors replied to requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n County spokesperson Molly Nichelson said the shift is done because so much of the sheriff\u2019s department funding comes from sales tax, meaning the CEO\u2019s office has to monitor the budget throughout the year and supplement if the taxes fall short.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the County\u2019s budget has limited General Purpose Revenue to allocate for all County departments, CEO Budget\u2019s strategy is to provide the amount of General Purpose Revenue needed either within the budget or when closing the fiscal year books,\u201d Nichelson wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n OC Supervisors are slated to discuss a budget report<\/a> detailing spending from the last fiscal year, which includes cost overruns, at their 9:30 a.m. meeting<\/a> next Tuesday.<\/p>\n Over the past two years, county supervisors haven\u2019t talked much about the sheriff\u2019s overspending when their staff notified them about it, approving both year-end budget reports without any public discussion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wayt said the county does everything they can to make the budget transparent, but it\u2019s difficult with how complex the over $10 billion county bureaucracy is.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that even the documents they provide to the public are hundreds of pages and that is only a high level pass,\u201d Wayt said. \u201cIf they printed up the entire detail of the budget it\u2019d be tens of thousands of pages, it\u2019s a difficult thing to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n The OC Sheriff is one of the most expensive departments in the county to begin with, taking up over 20% of the county\u2019s general fund with an over $1 billion annual budget to cover an elected sheriff and his over 3,900 other staff, including deputies and support personnel.\u00a0<\/p>\n There have also been different reasons each year for why the department overshot the budget, according to county reports.\u00a0<\/p>\n