Board to review additional funding requests

Riverside County supervisors will weigh whether to increase appropriations to several agencies that cannot meet their expenses in the current fiscal year, including the Sheriff’s Department, where the shortfall is $50 million.

The Board of Supervisors will hold a special afternoon session to review a list of allocation requests that the Executive Office has already reviewed and mostly approved.

The agencies’ deficits were forecast before budget hearings began last month and come as no surprise in the first month of 2017-18. The new fiscal year began on July 1.

County CEO George Johnson cautioned in a letter to the board about Tuesday’s session that $28.34 million is the vetted amount available for additional appropriations, and anything beyond that would “significantly forestall achieving structural balance.”

“Until additional ongoing resources can be identified, I cannot recommend any further discretionary spending increases,” Johnson wrote.

Sheriff Stan Sniff complained that the $10 million infusion proposed for his agency was well below the amount needed to meet objectives in patrol operations, mainly in the unincorporated areas of the county. Sniff sought $712 million in aggregate appropriations, but the board authorized $50 million less for this fiscal year.

“The sheriff has asked that at least $25-$30 million of the $50 million overall shortfall be minimally added back this year to avoid any deeper staff reductions,” Undersheriff Bill DiYorio said in a statement released last week. “This won’t repair the damage in staffing — especially over this past year to re-balance the department’s budget — but it does stop any further reductions that would be required.”

The patrol ratio in the unincorporated communities, comprising a population in excess of 400,000, is .75 deputies per 1,000 residents. It’s the smallest ratio in a decade. Sniff wants the figure back at 1 per 1,000.

According to the sheriff, if the board doesn’t restore funding, he will have no choice but to continue the current policy of workforce attrition, leaving vacancies unfilled and exposing the “public safety net” to “further degradation.”

The sheriff told supervisors last month that he had lost more than 200 positions through attrition — retirements and transfers — in the last fiscal year and was functioning with “bare bones” staffing.

Supervisor Marion Ashley replied that he would have no trouble voting for an additional $18 million for sheriff’s operations, where cost pressures have grown annually due to union-negotiated salary and benefits hikes for personnel, as well as internal service charges from other agencies that serve the department.

Johnson and other EO staff worry that fully meeting the sheriff’s and other agencies’ full cost obligations will drive reserves below the board-mandated $150 million minimum and keep the county in deficit spending mode for the foreseeable future. Johnson’s goal is to have the county in structural balance by 2021.

Reserves are projected to fall to about $166 million this fiscal year. One year ago, the reserve pool was just over $200 million.

The EO is recommending that the District Attorney’s Office receive $6.1 million in additional appropriations, though D.A. Mike Hestrin would still be left to contend with a $9 million shortfall in 2017-18. He indicated to the board last month that he could likely manage the red ink by controlling internal expenses and capping hiring.

Public Defender Steve Harmon is bound to receive an additional $4.36 million, on top of $2 million already approved by the board, essentially closing his budget gap, according to the Executive Office.

Additional but lower sums have been recommended for the Department of Public Social Services, the Economic Development Agency and other departments seeking to stay in the black.

One of the items on the EO’s recommendation list includes $4 million for a revamped human resources management system conceived by professional services firm KPMG, which is under contract with the county to find efficiencies and cost savings in most every agency. The board tomorrow will separately vote on amending its contract with KPMG, permitting $20.3 million more to be paid for services over the next two years.

With the exception of public safety agencies, the board directed all departments to make 6.5 percent reductions to their budgets in anticipation of steeper cost burdens imposed by the state in 2017-18, which were far less than expected.

The total county budget for the current fiscal year is about 2 percent smaller than the one enacted in 2016-17 — $5.57 billion.