The Santa Barbara County Civil Grand Jury found that insufficient management training, operating two county jails, and overtime loopholes are the main drivers of the Sheriff’s Office’s massive spending on overtime pay.
The Grand Jury released a report this week reviewing the overtime costs, the impact on the county’s financial situation, and recommendations to address the issue. The Sheriff’s Office routinely goes millions of dollars over budget for its overtime costs.
The department is on track to spend $19 million in overtime for the current fiscal year when it had a budget of $10 million.
Santa Barbara County is facing a projected $66-million shortfall over the next five years due to cuts in federal and state funding. The Sheriff’s Office receives 33% of the county’s general fund revenues, which are funded by local property and transient occupancy taxes. That’s more than any other department, and is an increase from 25% of the general fund budget in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Most of the department’s annual budget is used for employee payroll and benefits, which has continued to grow over the years due to overtime costs. The Sheriff’s Office has difficulty hiring new employees due to the area’s high cost of living, the report says.
In response, the Sheriff’s Office has relied on mandatory overtime to fill the gap, particularly for custody deputies in the county jails. The Sheriff’s Office is legally obligated to fulfill certain duties.
These duties include preserving the peace, operating the county jails, serving civil and criminal process, providing court security, and enforcing court orders.
However, the report points out that despite the growing budget and overtime costs, the sheriff’s office’s “patrol miles, arrests and jail population have not increased.”
The Grand Jury report pointed to four reasons for the rising cost of the Sheriff’s Office’s overtime.
The first of the issues is the cost of living and the department’s difficulty in attracting new staff to fill the positions over the past three years. The problem grew with the opening of the Northern Branch Jail in 2022.
Even though the Sheriff’s Office has managed to hire new staff, they have not alleviated the overtime issue since the new hires are still being trained and cannot work independently yet.
The report also highlighted issues with the current memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the county and the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association. The DSA is the labor union representing the Sheriff’s Office’s deputies.
Under the current MOU guidelines, deputies can gain overtime pay even if they work less than 80 hours in a two-week pay period.
For example, an employee working a regular Monday to Friday schedule can use some of their leave days for Monday and Tuesday instead of working. They can then work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at their regular rate.
The same employee can then work on Saturday and Sunday as overtime because, under the current rules, they already worked five days. The result is being paid five days at their regular rate and two at time-and-a-half, the report notes.
Additionally, the employee still accrues more leave time across all the time they were paid, including their overtime hours. The additional leave time allows the worker to continue using it for more overtime in the future.
The report described this practice as “pyramiding.”
The county auditor-controller found during a review of the Sheriff’s Office’s timecards that this was common, with 35.7% of timecards examined during that period showing this practice.
The Grand Jury recommends modifying the MOU between the county and the Deputy Sheriff’s Association to disallow the use of leave balances as time worked by Oct. 31. It also recommended setting a limit on the amount of overtime employees can work.
Another issue the Grand jury highlighted was insufficient management training and oversight of department employees and their timecards.
The jury found that even though supervisors, or sergeants, do get management and budget training when first promoted, those skills are not reinforced or emphasized in performance reviews.
The report stated the lack of proper oversight has direct impacts on the approval of timecards.
The report’s second recommendation would be for the Sheriff’s Office to restructure its employee performance reviews to hold management and staff accountable for overtime use.
It also recommended that the office hold a quarterly review for management to go over best practices for timecard approvals and shift approvals. Some timecards are accepted without being reviewed, the report noted.
The Grand Jury also recommended that the county and Sheriff’s Office work together to accelerate the installation and implementation of Workday internal software to track payroll and human resources. Delays implementing that system were brought up in the auditor-controller election.
The last issue the jury found was the large number of staff needed to operate the county’s two jails. The county has the Northern Branch Jail near Santa Maria and the Main Jail near Santa Barbara.
The report found that despite having a smaller jail population than in 2012, the Sheriff’s Office needs to maintain more administrative, support and management staff to run both sites.
The county currently has 819 beds between the two jails, and the average daily jail population at the time of the report was 745 people.
The Northern Branch jail was built to alleviate overcrowding at the Main Jail. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors plan to expand the Northern Branch Jail and reduce the population at the Main Jail. Renovating the older Main Jail facility would cost more than adding onto the newer jail complex, county officials determined.
The final recommendation by the Grand Jury is to decommission the Main Jail as soon as possible, to reduce operating costs of running two facilities.
Now that the report has been released, the Sheriff’s Office will have 60 days to respond to the recommendations and analysis. The County Board of Supervisors will have 90 days to respond to the findings.
The Grand Jury will release additional reports in the coming weeks.
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