Sheriff Outlines Alternate Budget Plans

Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff is proposing an alternate spending plan that relies on attrition, operational adjustments and increased revenue to prevent laying off hundreds of deputies in the next fiscal year.

The sheriff said his proposal would knock his department’s 2011-12 budget deficit down from $61 million to $17 million — without issuing pink slips, shuttering stations or reducing jail capacity.

Only general details about the plan were released by Sniff, who met with county Executive Office staff on Tuesday to discuss it.

“I think we made great progress (Tuesday) in moving away from a budget … that would have been a public safety disaster and moving closer to a far better compromise for all our communities,” Sniff said. “But we clearly need to find some additional funding to bridge the remaining gap so our budget next year remains in balance, or we will still need to lay off significant numbers of staff.”

Executive Office spokesman Ray Smith told City News Service that further research is needed to “determine whether or not the numbers presented (by the sheriff) are accurate.”

“After that determination, the county will move through the budget process and see whether the proposed direction is one in which the Board of Supervisors wants to proceed,” Sniff said. “It is encouraging to see the sheriff has realized the potential for alternatives to the extreme position he originally presented.”

Another round of budget hearings is scheduled June 13. Along with the Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney’s Office and Fire Department are facing budget shortfalls.

All county agencies are absorbing cuts, some as high as 25 percent, to comply with the board’s deficit reduction plans, which call for an end to depleting reserves to balance the county’s budget every year. Reserves have been cut in half since 2007 as property tax revenues plummeted.

The Sheriff’s Department consumes the largest share of general fund appropriations.

On May 13, Sniff released a statement saying the spending threshold set by the Executive Office — $225 million — for his department in 2011-12 would force him to slash as many as 800 patrol and correctional deputies from the payroll.

The county’s top lawman also warned that stations might have to be consolidated in unincorporated communities, where service levels would necessarily drop.

He said some jail pods would be deactivated, taking the county’s inmate beds down from 3,900 to 3,100, hence increasing the pressure on already- overcrowded detention facilities.

Pat McNamara, president of the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association, the union representing deputies, characterized the reorganization as potentially “devastating” to public safety.

According to Sniff, the alternate plan on the table now would rely on retirements and other personnel departures that routinely occur over the course of a year to produce “gradual savings.”

There would be “limited service reductions,” with the deputy-to- residents patrol ratio going as low as .75 to 1,000 in the unincorporated areas, sheriff’s officials said. The ratio is currently around 1 per 1,000.

Sexual predator investigative teams and anti-gang task forces would remain intact under the new plan, according to sheriff’s officials.

The department would need an infusion of funds from a “variety of sources” to make the proposal work, a sheriff’s spokesman said. There was reference to a “surplus” of Proposition 172 public safety sales tax revenue, but no other specifics.