By Greta Jochem
masslive.com
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — The state Inspector General’s Office released its final report on sheriff spending after “historic” overspending last year raised alarm bells for legislators.
“To put it in sheriffs’ terms, it’s a bit like the Wild West,” Inspector General Jeffrey S. Shapiro said in a statement Monday.
Among Shapiro’s conclusions: The state underfunds sheriffs’ offices, some sheriffs are given additional “unauthorized” pay, and sheriffs have some funds in accounts outside the state’s financial tracking system.
The probe flagged oversight problems, but state officials also lacked consensus on the sheriffs’ role in overspending.
“How we got to this point no longer matters,” Shapiro wrote in the report. “Sheriffs’ offices have been commonwealth agencies for more than 25 years. It is time for the chaos to stop.”
The nearly 200-page finalized investigation comes several months after the office’s preliminary report, published in February, called the budgeting process for Sheriffs’ Departments “deeply flawed” and flagged an impending financial crisis.
The probe was spurred by concern over the sheriffs’ combined $110 million deficit last year. Sheriffs typically get extra cash at the end of a fiscal year to cover spending beyond their budget, but last summer, their request was double the previous year’s ask. Hampden County needed the most money: $26 million on top of the $102 million the state initially allocated it.
Sheriffs have said their budgets are chronically underfunded.
As the Inspector General’s Office investigated, the state’s sheriffs cooperated, both groups said.
“The sheriffs will carefully evaluate the report’s findings and recommendations, and will study and deliberate them as part of our continued efforts to strengthen operations, enhance accountability, and ensure responsible use of public resources across the commonwealth,” Patrick J. Cahillane, Hampshire County sheriff and president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association, said in a statement on Monday.
The state underfunds the offices, the report found. Collectively, sheriffs received 84% of the budget requested last year. But there’s a general agreement between lawmakers, state budget writers and sheriffs that the initial allocation won’t be enough, and that sheriffs will have to ask for supplemental funds at the end of the year to plug gaps.
“Accordingly, sheriffs have effectively had no spending ceiling,” the report says. The deficit spending is illegal, it says.
In addition, state funding that offsets costs for required initiatives — like no-cost calls and medication-assisted drug treatment — is not given to sheriffs until the end of the fiscal year at the soonest and as late as six months later, making it difficult to know what will be covered.
Sheriffs often use money in their payroll account for other costs, “which makes it impossible to determine the true drivers of their deficits,” the Inspector General’s Office said.
Shapiro’s top concern in the probe: In total, sheriffs had $36 million at the end of the fiscal year in 120 private bank accounts not monitored by the state. Some accounts are being temporarily held for inmates, and others are owned by the sheriff and funded by commissions from the commissary or phone calls before that practice was banned. The public money should be used to plug budget holes or put into the state’s general fund, the report said.
The investigation also looked at duties that sheriffs’ offices are taking on that the law might not require. In total, sheriffs spent $17.3 million last year on that work, such as mutual aid, task forces and the running of an animal shelter.
The report found that most state sheriffs have been paid more than what state law explicitly allows.
In Hampden County , for example, last year Sheriff Nicholas Cocchi received $13,000 in addition to his annual salary of around $189,000. The bonuses, a $3,300 education incentive and $9,800 in longevity pay, are from a pay structure designed before Cocchi’s time in office, which the state’s Ethics Commission advised him was permissible, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said earlier this year.
A few sheriffs received no bonuses, and others were paid similar amounts to Cocchi. Though the Inspector General’s Office says the payments are not authorized, the report asks the Legislature to weigh in.
Hampden Sheriff’s office
The report found that two major initiatives the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office runs are not adequately funded by the state.
The women’s jail, the only one in Western Massachusetts, and a Section 35 facility, a program for court-mandated drug treatment, are not allocated enough money. To keep the women’s jail running, the Sheriff’s Office has to use funds from its operating budget, and the Section 35 program needed $12 million more than it was budgeted, the report says.
“The report confirms what we have been saying for years: the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for providing several unique regional and statewide services that extend far beyond the traditional operation of a county correctional facility,” Cocchi said in a statement Monday.
“We are proud to provide those services, but they must be funded in a manner that reflects their true cost and regional impact,” he wrote.
The report also found that of all Sheriffs’ Departments, Hampden County deficit spends its payroll account the deepest, intentionally moving millions from it “not for the purpose of spending, but to preserve the funds for later use,” the report says.
“The Hampden County Sheriff’s Office has taken advantage of relaxed fiscal oversight to engage in egregious deficit spending,” the report says.
The department also did a significant amount of discretionary law enforcement, the report found. That included helping police in Chicopee and West Springfield, and patrolling the Connecticut River, Forest Park and Union Station. It also had an agreement with Southwick to patrol Lake Congamond, which was recently cut.
Towns do not pay for the services, and some call it “mission creep,” the report says.
The inspector general could not find a law that empowers the sheriffs’ offices to patrol parks or the river.
“The OIG understands that in some cases,” the report says, “the district attorney has declined to bring charges to prosecute arrests by a deputy sheriff because in those instances the district attorney determined the deputy sheriff lacked the authority to make the arrest.”
Since the preliminary report, the Hampden sheriff’s office made about $4 million in staff cuts, including ending the patrolling of Forest Park by horse and of Union Station, and cutting down its marine patrol.
With the state budgeting process for next fiscal year underway, House and Senate budget drafts have taken into account the preliminary report, the final report says.
“I believe all stakeholders agree that past improper and illegal practices cannot continue,” Shapiro wrote. “That said, solving the budget issues and eliminating deficit spending is a multiyear effort and will require compromise from all stakeholders.”
This story has been updated to reflect that the Inspector General’s Office believes that payments to sheriffs on top of their statutorily set salaries are unauthorized.
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