Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/oc-supervisor-spending/)
OC sheriff’s deputies now make more than double what the county’s social workers do in median pay and benefits, according to payroll data, a gap that has widened further in recent years.
As retail sales plummet during the pandemic, local governments across America are facing massive budget holes. Orange County is no exception.
While authorizing new spending this week for the Sheriff’s Department, county supervisors continue to remain silent about mounting revelations of Sheriff’s Department evidence booking misconduct that could weaken thousands of criminal cases.
Most Orange County employees are on track to get 2.5-percent annual raises for most of the next three years, on the heels of larger raises for sheriff’s deputies approved two weeks ago.
Plans call for mental health and drug addiction treatment programs to be available to all county residents, regardless of who their insurance provider is, which officials said would be the first facility in the nation to do so.
County officials are supporting the deal as a sound decision that creates certainty about the next four years of deputy pay, while a fiscal conservative who formerly led the California Republican Party raises alarm bells about its size.
Orange County Sheriff’s officials outspent their revenues by $33 million during this last fiscal year – prompting county officials to pull millions of dollars from other departments like the Health Care Agency to cover the shortfall.
County costs are growing faster than revenues, most prominently with the Sheriff’s Department, officials said.
Last year, as county officials were hauled into federal court over a shortage of homeless shelters, Voice of OC reported the stockpiled mental health funds had reached $186 million beyond the reserves.
Medical field teams will treat homeless people living on the streets after a federal judge pressured CalOptima — the county insurance plan for the poor and elderly — which also last week earmarked $100 million to homeless services.