Reliance on overtime, spiking inmate medical care, a growing prisoner population and a greater need for private security drove the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office into a nearly $2.3 million shortfall at the end of the last fiscal year, county officials said.
The department, whose principal function is to run the county’s Adult Detention Center in downtown Fairfax, has been struggling to retain and recruit staff amid fierce competition from law enforcement agencies across the region.
About 10 percent of sworn positions in the office are vacant, according to information prepared by county staff, requiring “the extensive use of overtime by more costly, senior employees to fill the vacancies.”
The “large majority” of the budget overage stemmed from overtime costs, Sheriff Stan Barry told The Examiner. County officials have agreed to a $2,500 stipend for deputies staffing the jail, on top of their salaries, which Barry said has helped them begin to fill what was once more than 50 empty spots.
“We’re thinking, toward the end of this calendar year, they should start making a pretty big dent in the overtime,” he said.
The sheriff’s shortfall for fiscal 2008, which ended June 30, was covered by leftover funds from other agencies, according to Susan Datta, director of the county’s Department of Management and Budget. But dwindling county revenues, tied to the battered housing market and weak economy, leave questions over how to plug what could be a similar gap this year.
“The concern is that if current spending patterns continue that they will also be short in fiscal 2009, and there may not be sufficient funds to offset that,” she said.
Part of the difficulty is rooted in a pay disparity between the sheriff’s office and the larger Fairfax County Police Department, whose pay increases have outpaced that of its smaller sister agency.
The jail has seen a large number of inmates who require pricey medical care, as well as an increase in the sheer number of inmates. The adult detention center’s daily population grew from 1,286 in fiscal 2007 to 1,335 in fiscal 2008, Datta said. She said drug costs that year were also 20 percent higher than the last.
“HIV-positive prisoners are extremely expensive; if you get prisoners with dialysis it’s extremely expensive,” Barry said.
Also a factor is the cost of private security for the county’s revamped courthouse complex.
