2 County Operations Face Budget Woes

In the midst of an extraordinarily tight budget year, two county operations--the probation and sheriff’s departments--continue to struggle with growing salary costs and threaten to put the county more than $5 million in the red, officials said Tuesday.

Estimates by the county auditor-controller’s office warn that the Sheriff’s Department faces an overrun of $4.3 million and the Probation Department is running about $880,000 above its budget allocation. Those estimates likely overstate the problem somewhat, Auditor Steve Lewis said, but they are based on an extrapolation of spending by the departments so far this fiscal year, which began in July.

Unless those departments can rein in their spending, it could jeopardize other county services or force officials to gut the $16-million emergency reserve budget, Ronald S. Rubino, the county’s chief budget officer, said in an interview Tuesday.

“I’ve already warned them, and I’ve gotten assurances that they will try to keep it under control,” said Rubino, who will present a midyear budget report to the board in late November. “This is going to be an important issue for the board when they get their first midyear budget review.”

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, while cautioning that the budget estimates are only preliminary, said they “underscore the value of this midyear look we’re doing.”

Board Chairman Don R. Roth agreed and said his preliminary meetings on the county’s midyear budget status already have him concerned. “Things are not good,” he said. “What we could be headed for is some layoffs.”

Roth and Vasquez, along with other officials, have expressed grave reservations about trying to cope with the shortfalls by invading the county’s emergency reserve. “Can you imagine if we have an earthquake or some other kind of catastrophe, and we needed the overtime money to deal with it?” Roth said.

With money tight, officials said, it is all the more important that departments stay within their allocated budgets. Most are projected to do so, but the sheriff’s and probation departments face the most serious problems, officials said.

Although conceding that they face a shortfall, Sheriff’s Department officials take issue with the auditor’s projections, said Assistant Sheriff Walter Fath, adding that departmental estimates place the deficit at about $1.6 million.

To address its shortfall, the department has imposed a hiring freeze, letting vacancies stay unfilled for at least 90 days after they open up, Fath said. Overtime expenses, which cost the department nearly $1 million a month, are also under close scrutiny, and officials hope to trim them by the end of the year.

In the Probation Department, higher-than-predicted numbers of inmates at Juvenile Hall have contributed to the department’s unexpected expenses. The county is funded for 314 beds at the facility, said Chief Probation Officer Michael Schumacher. Since July 1, “we’ve had upwards of 390 to 400,” he said.

Schumacher estimates that probation needs to make up about $900,000 to balance its budget this year. To do that, officials are meeting with county judges in an effort to develop plans for holding down the Juvenile Hall population and are holding some positions vacant to save on salaries, he said.

The emerging budget problems come at a precarious time for the county. Faced with deep cuts handed down by the state, departmental budgets have already been trimmed, and some board members are showing signs of balking at plans to impose a jail booking fee on cities and school districts, a move that would cost the county $2.1 million.

And even though the supervisors are confronted with a perilously small emergency reserve, many county functions are going underfunded, creating pressure for the board to dip into what few available funds it has. Tuesday, for instance, supervisors approved an appropriation of $940,000 to mental health programs.

“This is clear evidence, I think, of the commitment that we have to these programs,” Vasquez said.