Dr. Lee Bushong<\/p>\n
What exactly is enough when it comes to your taxpayer dollars? Government overspending is a pandemic, and we\u2019ve seen attempts (like DOGE) to curtail overspending, but how is that done? And why is the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office asking for more money?<\/p>\n
The Sheriff\u2019s Office has made an absurd $41 million dollar budget increase request this year. The current sheriff, when he was appointed to the office in 2018, had a budget of about $191 million dollars. Fast forward to today, eight years later, and the base budget sits at about $327 million dollars \u2014 a 42% increase over such a short amount of time. Now, he is asking for another $41 million dollars, bringing the budget increase up nearly 50% more than what it was when Gov. Scott appointed him.<\/p>\n
A sheriff is supposed to be a steward of the public\u2019s faith. He should be a fiscal hawk, concerned with saving money, not spending it. People are upset at this increase in budget with no appreciable increase in law enforcement operations. What the sheriff should be doing is providing a line-by-line account for the people as to why he needs this amount of money. A vague reference to salaries and operations is simply not acceptable. For instance, the starting wage of a deputy sheriff in Lee County is currently at $68K whereas the median household income for Lee County is about $76K (the median household income assumes the income for all workers in the house, and not just one person). Sixty-eight thousand dollars is on par with comparable entry level positions in law enforcement for similar agencies and a wage increase, beyond cost-of-living adjustments, isn\u2019t necessary. And what does \u201coperations\u201d mean to the common citizen? And why does it need to be increased? No one can answer that at this time because the request is too vague.<\/p>\n
What the sheriff should be doing is introducing a zero-based budget to identify areas where spending doesn\u2019t need to occur and reallocate that money to cover the costs of salaries or operations. A zero-based budget simply refers to a concept where each unit\u2019s total allocation of tax-payer money, minus its total expenses or expenditures, equals zero. This shows where money is being allocated that doesn\u2019t necessarily need to be. For instance, is it necessary to have community outreach locations staffed by personnel to support the sheriff\u2019s public image (isn\u2019t that what campaigns are for?) or to fund having his name on every building and car? Or what about having \u201cmedia\u201d experiences where you, too, can get a picture with the likeness of the sheriff in front of a green screen? And why does he pay to have these locations staffed, like the one in the Fort Myers International airport? Don\u2019t think for a moment that taxpayer dollars aren\u2019t funding those locations or self-promotion.\u00a0 It\u2019s not necessary and continued funding is a waste.<\/p>\n
The County Commission is the gateway to the Sheriff\u2019s Office\u2019s dollars. Perhaps the sheriff is irresponsible with your hard-earned money, but the Commission is part of the problem as well. If they approve the sheriff\u2019s budget, they are acting recklessly with your dollars. If this really angers you, I suggest you write to your county commissioner and tell them precisely how you feel about this. They are the checks-and-balances of the sheriff\u2019s budgetary requests.<\/p>\n
If I were the sheriff, I would perform a comprehensive audit to identify inefficiencies, redundant roles, rank structure and organization, and underutilized resources within each of the major bureaus (Administration, Operations, Law Enforcement, & Corrections) to streamline existing resources and probably be able to return money to the county commission, not ask for more. I\u2019d also use outside auditors to reduce bias and publicly post the auditor\u2019s findings to increase public trust.<\/p>\n
A responsible sheriff, especially facing the Amendment 3 tax exemptions, would tighten his belt and cut the fat from the budget, not ask for more money. We all have had to do it, and it\u2019s his time to do it also. If he doesn\u2019t, what does that say about him?<\/p>\n
Dr. Lee Bushong is a tenured professor of criminal justice and is a former lieutenant with the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office, where he began his service in 1998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Lee Bushong What exactly is enough when it comes to your taxpayer dollars? Government overspending is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-372963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}