The Board of Supervisors heard Tuesday that Sheriff’s Office overtime hours are decreasing, potentially a good sign as Santa Barbara County tries to reign in that spending. 

The Sheriff’s Office logs over-budget overtime to the tune of millions of dollars each year, an amount the county ends up covering with discretionary general fund dollars. 

The Sheriff’s Office spent $20 million on overtime last year, and has a budget of $10 million this year, which it already exceeded.

The county is now auditing the department’s overtime use and requiring regular reports. 

The Auditor-Controller’s Office presented the first report to the supervisors on Tuesday, and Undersheriff Brad Welch highlighted efforts to track and control employee overtime. 

These new controls have “shown that we can continue to crack down on overtime where it’s not needed and still support the operational overtime where it’s needed because we have so many vacancies,” Welch said. 

The supervisors were generally impressed with the changes. 

“This list does beg the question: Why were these controls not in place?” Supervisor Laura Capps asked. “I mean, blowing through overtime budgets has been an issue year after year after year.” 

Welch said sometimes leadership teams “just need a reset,” and his team came in with fresh eyes and “new ideas for the age-old problem.” 

Sheriff Says Overtime Budgets ‘Artificially Low’ 

Sheriff Bill Brown later told the supervisors that overtime budgets have “borne no real relationship to the historical use of overtime.” 

The budget was raised to $10 million this year “but that still bears no relevancy to what our previous use was, and what the anticipated use is this year,” he said. 

Budgeted amounts have been “artificially low,” he said, arguing that it’s cheaper to use overtime to fill hours than hire full-time staff to work those hours. 

“In preceding years, the sheriff’s overtime was rectified with fund balances from other budget sources, and again, it was done, as mentioned, because it was a less costly alternative,” Brown said. 

The Sheriff’s Office anticipates a “significant reduction in the overtime” because of the new controls that “came about as a result of the dire financial situation the county found itself in,” Brown said Tuesday. 

The county is facing $70 million in cuts to address deficits next year, but the supervisors have voiced concern about high overtime costs for many years. Last year was the first time they called for an audit.  

Brown’s comments were “instructive,” Capps said.  

“Because if an overtime budget is deemed irrelevant that’s a real issue that gets to the crux of the issue of why maybe controls weren’t put in place to make sure that that budget was adhered to,” she said. 

The budget is “an agreed-upon number because that’s how fiscal management works, and there has to be a budget, and it can’t be fungible. That’s not how we spend taxpayer money,” she said. 

“You can blow past a budget if the number is not deemed relevant. I find that really bewildering.” 

No other supervisors commented on Brown’s remarks. 

The board has increased the number of funded positions for the Sheriff’s Office over time, hoping to cut overtime costs and address morale issues from mandatory overtime.

The Sheriff’s Office has been slow to fill them in past years, frustrating the supervisors who eventually approved hiring incentives in 2023. 

Welch said the department has 60 vacancies and 34 people on leave right now. Brown said the number of sworn positions vacant is more like 20, and that’s because of the significant number of recent retirements. 

In past years, the Sheriff’s Office has used savings from vacant positions to pay for some overtime hours. With new hires, that means fewer salary savings, but the department still has to backfill some hours during their eight to 12 months of training, Welch said. 

Supervisor Bob Nelson asked if, in past years, the true cost of overtime was “papered over by vacancies” and Welch said that is “100% accurate.” 

“At some point, once we hire up, we will have to have a more realistic overtime budget,” Nelson said. 

Efforts to Reduce Overtime 

The Sheriff’s Office has worked with the Deputy Sheriffs Association to decrease mandatory overtime shifts at the jails, cap the number of supervisors per shift, and decrease overtime law enforcement shifts from 12 hours to eight hours, Welch said. 

The office introduced paper overtime sheets, and supervisors have to review and sign them to make sure the shift is needed for regular operations, Welch said. 

There’s also an effort to better manage quarterly training, so there’s not as much overtime needed to compensate, he added. 

The data unit also sends automated reports that Welch said are “almost a live view of overtime.” 

It will help show staffing trends and could assist in flagging potential fraud in the future, he noted. 

Custody sergeant Segun Ogunleye was arrested and charged last year for timecard fraud and stealing more than $175,000 in overtime pay. 

“Supervisors are entrusted to modify calendars and schedules, and that’s what he exploited,” Welch said. “If it happens again, it would be immediately flagged.” 

“Well, hopefully it never happens again,” Capps said. 

Overtime Costs Report

This week’s report on overtime covers July 2025 to February 2026, but future reports will be monthly. 

Overtime costs and hours have “decreased slightly” compared to the same period last fiscal year. 

Sheriff’s Office employees are still using leave balances to generate overtime, the report says.

They are also still working mandatory overtime shifts that are longer than regular shifts (12 hours plus), but the number of those shifts “appear to be decreasing.” 

The use of mandatory overtime overall is “substantially trending downward” compared to last year, and so is the use of overtime for newly hired employees.