The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office spent $20 million on overtime staffing last year, and the Board of Supervisors will discuss the chronic over-budget overtime spending at Tuesday’s meeting.
The Sheriff’s Office already spent its entire yearly overtime budget by the end of January, according to the county, and is on track to go $9 million over budget by July at this rate.
The meeting will take place in Santa Maria at the Joseph Centeno Betteravia Government Administration Building at 511 E. Lakeside Parkway. The meeting begins at 9 a.m. and can be attended in person or livestreamed.
During the meeting, the Board of Supervisors will hear the status of the Sheriff’s Office overtime staffing and spending, and discuss how to direct the department to find ways to reduce its overtime use.
The Sheriff’s Office, led by elected Sheriff Bill Brown, has gone over budget with overtime costs, by millions of dollars, for years. The supervisors heard a report in December that there was a “substantial increase” between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 fiscal years. During that time, the county opened a second jail facility near Santa Maria.
The annual cost of overtime increased from $8-12 million per year during the 2021-22 fiscal year to $18-22 million the next year.
Because of these costs, the Sheriff’s Office has had a negative budget in four of the last five fiscal years, according to the county.
The Board of Supervisors heard about the increase in already-high overtime spending in December during a budget update. County Executive Office staff gave a report that covered the first quarter of the year and showed the Sheriff’s Office had already used more than half of its annual $10.1 million overtime budget.
A memo from the Auditor-Controller’s Office in December analyzed thousands of timesheets for the 2024-25 year. The observations include: Some staff earn more in overtime pay than regular pay; there are no limits on employee work time; and mandatory overtime shifts are generally longer than regular work shifts.
As the county faces potentially significant budget deficits in the next few years, the Sheriff’s Office’s overtime costs are a more pressing issue for the Board of Supervisors. A five-year forecast for the county predicts a $23-million deficit for next year.
The supervisors have used money from the county’s general fund to fill the gap in the Sheriff’s Office budget in the past.
The county is also facing a costly expansion of the Northern Branch Jail, just a few years after it opened. The county is planning to put down $50 million for construction and pay $8.5 million annually in debt service.
The total estimated cost of the expansion is $179 million.
Overtime Costs Factored into Sales Tax Decision
During last week’s meeting, the supervisors discussed whether to ask voters to increase the sales tax in unincorporated parts of the county.
The ballot measure failed to get enough support, partially due to concerns about whether voters would support a tax increase after recent headlines highlighting the Sheriff’s Office overtime costs.
Second District Supervisor Laura Capps said that it is hard to ask the public to support a tax increase when they see how much the county spends to fix the Sheriff’s Office’s deficits.
“We would have to then defend (that), and I don’t know how to defend that,” Capps told the Board. “And again, structurally, I don’t know how we fix that.”
Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino agreed with Capps and pointed to a recent story about a custody sergeant arrested for overtime fraud.
Sheriff Argues Office is Understaffed
In a letter to the board, Sheriff Bill Brown stated that multiple studies done by his staff and outside personnel found that the number of funded positions in his department is “insufficient to maintain the minimum staffing levels necessary to provide mandated services and reasonable levels of safety for our community members, personnel, and inmates.”
He continued by saying that overtime pay and extra staff are the only options available to fill the staffing gap.
Brown has argued that one of the reasons for the high use of overtime is the history of understaffing in his department. Brown says the department has used overtime pay to have employees work longer hours to make up for the staffing issue.
Long hours have made it difficult to retain or hire new employees, which has made the staffing problem worse, Brown has said.
The Board of Supervisors approved funds for a signing bonus in 2023 to help hire more staff. In September 2025, Undersheriff Craig Bonner told the Board of Supervisors that they had hired more than 100 new deputies, but they were not all ready for the field.
