New Bartholomew County Sheriff Chris Lane has inherited a department that the numbers show has been neglected by the Bartholomew County Council.
Why do we say that? Because as The Republic’s Andy East reported last week, the department paid more than $513,193 in overtime to deputies last year, including one who raked in more than $44,000 just in overtime pay.
The reason for this? The county council has rejected pleas to increase staffing at the sheriff’s department, which would slash overtime paid to deputies and staff who are working far too many hours filling in for people who are not there.
This cannot continue. Whatever rationale county council members may have had for not filling requested positions at the sheriff’s department fails in light of the absurd amount of money taxpayers have paid in overtime. On this, the buck stops with the county council.
As stewards of the county purse, it cannot be lost on council members — or the public they serve — that this situation is an awful deal for the county, the taxpayers, public safety and frankly anyone who isn’t raking in big bucks through overtime.
Look at it this way: The amount the county doled out in overtime pay at the sheriff’s department last year equates to the base salaries of eight full-time entry-level deputy positions, based on the county’s salary ordinance.
But Lane isn’t asking for that much. He told East he will ask the council for two new positions while also trying to fill vacancies in jail staff. He made a similar request last year that the council turned down.
The sheriff has little latitude on staffing because state law mandates minimum staffing on the roads and in the jail. So if there aren’t enough employees, those who are there will have to pull extra shifts at a greater expense to the taxpayer for every hour worked. Worse, these more expensive hours tend to be a bad deal because burnout becomes a factor. Lane put it this way:
“When you get to so much overtime, and guys are working 12-hour shifts, and they’re working five, six, seven, eight or more shifts in a row where they don’t have that day off, their work-life balance, it doesn’t exist,” he said. “And I think that can create a lot of other health issues.”
“We are in a line of work that split seconds matter,” Lane said of the potentially dangerous work environment that deputies and corrections officers work in every day. “Split-second decisions are important. People can get seriously hurt if somebody’s tired, and that officer can be hurt, or somebody else could be hurt because of that.”
Typically, when department heads come to the council to seek additional positions, they are asked to justify those expenses.
Here, we will need to ask the council to justify any decision that doesn’t add staff and cut an untenable amount of overtime being paid out in the sheriff’s budget.
We realize that it’s impossible to reduce overtime to zero, particularly for first responders who may get a call at any hour of the day. But the council and Lane must look coldly and realistically at this number — more than half a million dollars in overtime in a single year — and cut that dollar number significantly.
That’s what good public stewardship would look like. We’ll be watching.
