SAN ANTONIO – Bexar County Commissioners are facing painful budget cuts to reduce a big deficit including no cost of living increase for employees.
But one expense that keeps growing is deputy overtime at the Bexar County Jail.
In our latest Waste Watch, the News 4 I-Team sits down with Sheriff Javier Salazar to ask the question you want answered: why are millions of taxpayers’ dollars going toward increased overtime at the jail?
Bexar County paid out an estimated $16,474,797 in overtime for jail deputies in fiscal year 2026. Sheriff Javier Salazar says one reason for the huge increase in OT is that he can’t find enough good candidates to hire as new deputies.
“My daughter was 29 at the time of her death leaving behind a five year old son and an infant daughter,” said Rexanne Seidler. Her daughter Alexandra Gediminas died at the jail in 2021 from what was determined to be drug related heart failure.
Seidler believes deputies working long overtime shifts are not as attentive to inmates with medical emergencies.
“She’d be alive today if her medical emergency would have been handled appropriately,” Seidler said.
In the four years after Gediminas’s death, overtime hours worked at the jail skyrocketed. The county’s own data shows OT hours worked increased by 500 percent between 2022 and 2025.
“Why do we keep seeing increased overtime?” asked the I-Team’s Jaie Avila.
“We have a sick inmate population, and when I say sick, I don’t mean the common cold,” said Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.
He says as many as 200 inmates a week have to be transferred to the hospital for things like cancer treatment, heart disease and other medical conditions too serious to treat at the jail infirmary.
“Whenever I have one inmate that has to now go to the hospital, I have to keep one deputy on overtime to take that person to the hospitals, take them to whatever appointment, guard them while they may be in intensive care after an operation of some sort,” said Salazar.
The sheriff says he also has 125 vacant positions, in part because deputies are transferred from the jail over to patrol duty and he can’t replace the vacancies with enough qualified candidates.
“One of the things that we’re working very hard to not do is relax our standards. There are just certain people that are not fit to wear a uniform,” Salazar said.
He argues the overtime price tag is somewhat misleading because some of that money was already set aside to pay new deputies if he could fill those empty positions.
He also points out that the jail population has increased in recent years and now stands at about 4,800.
“Historically, no other sheriff has dealt with the type of jail population that I’m dealing with now. With that being said, we’re doing the very best that we can.”
Salazar says law enforcement is also experiencing an unprecedented number of retirements, making it harder to maintain a full jail staff.