Sheriff’s departments across Virginia are lobbying the state General Assembly to provide about $13 million and say they face hundreds of potential job cuts if they don’t get it. Absent action from Richmond, sheriff’s offices could lose about 376 positions around the state, including nearly 40 in Northern Virginia, according to the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association.
| Coming up short | ||
| Potential cutbacks to area sheriff’s departments | ||
| Locality | Dollar amount | Estimated FTE* reduction |
| Arlington | $238,875 | 6.71 |
| Alexandria | $158,831 | 4.46 |
| Fairfax County/City | $462,344 | 12.98 |
| Loudoun | $409,409 | 11.50 |
| Prince William County/Manassas City/Manassas Park City | $55,342 | 1.55 |
| *full-time equivalent | ||
| Source: Virginia Sheriffs’ Association | ||
The sheriffs were counting on the General Assembly to impose a public safety fee on property and casualty insurance premiums last year to generate about $70 million in the current two-year budget, $30 million of which would have gone to the sheriffs.
But the fee was never enacted, said John Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs Association.
Gov. Bob McDonnell’s budget proposal provides departments with $16.6 million divided evenly over the next two years to partially offset the $30 million they had expected. But that still leaves the sheriffs $13.4 million short, according to Jones.
Though plans to raise the money through a new insurance fee collapsed, the sheriffs are still counting on the state to provide money they thought was coming.
“This is not the kind of thing that happens in normal budgeting,” Jones said. “I don’t know how it happened.”
But as it stands, the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office could be forced to cut four deputies, Arlington Chief Deputy Paul Larson said.
The county’s state lawmakers have joined with the sheriffs association to help restore the funding, he said.
Arlington and Alexandria, though, pay a greater share of their sheriff’s departments’ personnel costs and may be in a better position to offset the lost funding than other localities that lean more heavily on the state for money, Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne said.
“It would have a significant impact on us, even though we’re supplemented financially through the city,” Lawhorne said. “For a sheriff of a rural county who receives no support from their county whatsoever, it would have a devastating impact because there are no other means for them to replace that money lost.”
