Just as the budget for fiscal year 2017 entered its final week, Sheriff Peyton Grinnell asked county commissioners to pay for $500,000 worth of Hurricane Irma expenses that he didn’t have money to cover. They said yes.
Seven days later, however, commissioners demanded he cut the same amount from his 2018 budget that started Sunday, and the money has become a political contest between commissioners and the sheriff, whose total budget is about $64 million.
The way most Florida sheriffs get money is by submitting a budget to commissioners, who can approve or deny it. A sheriff can appeal to the governor if he or she doesn’t like the commission’s decision. Most, including Lake, don’t budget their own reserve funds — that’s up to the county.
The tricky factor in this case is timing. All the cash the Sheriff’s Office didn’t spend during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 goes back to the County Commission by law. So, sheriffs spend right down to the bone in the final weeks.
In this case, the Sheriff’s Office had a $1.8 million payroll to make just two days before the end of the fiscal year, and nearly all the heavy overtime expense of Irma was piled into that single pay period, along with managing 14 shelters during the storm and pre-ordering enough fuel for patrol cars and food to carry meals for 800 inmates through a week.
Now, commissioners are demanding Grinnell trim his 2017-18 budget by $500,000. Surprise, sheriff! You gotta pay it back!
Commission Chairman Tim Sullivan said in a Sept. 28 letter to Grinnell that the commission was balancing the “needs for services” against “fiscally conservative principals” in asking for the money back.
And right there, you have the commission’s misstep. Commissioners want to balance the needs of everyday working and taxpaying people in Lake against how they think things should work in their insulated little conservative worlds.
Grinnell said he won’t reduce his budget by the $500,000 requested. He asked for an amount he was sure would cover the bills and said he would return money from purchases that would have been made out of the 2017-18 budget, such as fuel.
But commissioners are wrong in demanding he return all the money. Big disasters aren’t free for the sheriff.
Consider that by asking for the full return of what they apparently considered an emergency loan — the sheriff considered it an emergency addition to his 2016-17 budget — commissioners are sending the message that Grinnell should be able to pick up hundreds of thousands for the total cost of two storms in one fiscal year, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.
Is that fair? Of course not. Still, only Commissioner Sean Parks answered an email asking why the sheriff should absorb the costs of storms without a reserve fund of his own. He vowed to work with Grinnell. Maybe the other four were busy dragging debris out to the road so jail inmates could cart it to the dump in homemade trailers — for free — potentially saving the county millions.
If the commission wants to play political hardball, they’d best remember that Grinnell could lob a few pitches of his own.
Consider also that the Sheriff’s Office uses inmate labor to mow the equivalent of 125 acres of county-owned property every week at no charge to the county. Inmates work daily at the county’s animal shelter, reducing the need for paid staff. The Sheriff’s Office transports people who are mentally ill from hospitals and doctor’s offices to the county’s only mental-health facility in Leesburg. The sheriff is entitled to collect from the county for that service but never has. Inmates also work in the jail garden by growing vegetables to reduce the cost of their food, and they help the county’s public works department on a variety of projects.
Grinnell isn’t obliged to do any of that.
Commissioners need to rethink their strategy and work with the sheriff, not act like he’s some shyster from the federal government come to “help” them.
Lritchie@orlandosentinel.com. Lauren invites you to send her a friend request on Facebook at www.facebook.com/laurenonlake.