The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office is facing a review of its overtime policies after it again exceeded its annual budget, this time to the amount of $4.4 million. 

The audit was discussed on Tuesday during a fourth-quarter budget presentation to the county Board of Supervisors.

After years of rising overtime costs at the county’s jails caused by staffing shortages, a review of the Sheriff’s Office’s time card practices will be conducted by the county’s Auditor-Controller’s Office. 

The county’s general fund ended the 2024-25 fiscal year with a $14.7 million surplus, according to a fourth-quarter budget report. However, that amount was $2.4 million lower than projected because of an unexpected deficit from the Sheriff’s Office.

Paul Clementi, the budget director for the county, said the deficit has been hidden in previous years because of the use of outside grants that the Sheriff’s Office did not qualify for last year. 

Clementi added that his team will address the issue by requiring the Sheriff’s Office to keep track of outside sources of funding, such as grants, and report them. He said that will allow the county to know ahead of time whether the Sheriff’s Office will go over budget.

The Sheriff’s Office is also being asked to review its time card policies, which have seen an increase in the number of overtime hours logged. Eight employees recorded more than 1,000 hours of overtime during the 2019-20 fiscal year. However, 55 employees documented more than 1,000 hours in 2024-25, according to a county staff report. 

One employee was found to have logged 2,334 hours of overtime in the past year.

“We believe these recommended measures will help with our monitoring and reporting and catch large issues earlier in the year, but ultimately, it is still incumbent on the sheriff’s department to manage costs within their adopted budget,” Clementi said.

Clementi added that the long-term effects of the Sheriff’s Office’s budget deficit will likely force other county departments to work on smaller budgets and will take general fund revenue away from projects.

One example that Clementi gave was the Northern Branch Jail expansion. He said that with less money in the general fund, the county will have to take out more debt to build the expansion.

Undersheriff Craig Bonner attributed the unexpected costs of salaries to the Sheriff’s Office’s recent hiring spree. One of the reasons in past years for the high cost of overtime has been a lack of staffing in the Sheriff’s Office, which required overtime to make up.

The board responded to that issue by allowing the Sheriff’s Office to hire new employees. Bonner said the office has been successful in hiring more than 100 new deputies during the oast year who have already been sworn in.

However, he said those deputies are not ready for the field.

“You have 100 people who, for almost a year, were unproductive assets,” Bonner said. “What that means is we’re paying them to train, but we’re also paying another deputy on overtime to do the work that that asset would hopefully eventually do.”

Bonner added that the difficulty lies in trying to train a large number of people at one time when there was a significant staffing deficit. However, he said there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Regarding hours logged on the time cards, Bonner said the Sheriff’s Office uses the same system as the rest of the county departments. He added that the system does not indicate why an employee would have used overtime, but said it was to maintain staffing on patrol or in the jails.

Supervisor Joan Hartmann asked whether the audit would be for staff in the custody department or the entire Sheriff’s Office. Ed Price, the assistant auditor-controller, said the audit was for the custody staff but could include the whole Sheriff’s Office.

The Board of Supervisors approved the budget item and a motion to expand the audit to the entire Sheriff’s Office in a vote.