Tentative $5.45 Billion Budget Approved For Riverside County

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA – The Riverside County Board of Supervisors today tentatively approved a $5.45 billion budget for fiscal year 2017-18, but deferred action on filling requests for additional appropriations -- including tens of millions of dollars for public safety agencies -- until July 25, when a budget implementation hearing will be held.

"We have some capacity for additional commitments, but the budget will not be structurally balanced," county Chief Financial Officer Paul McDonnell told the board in the final budget hearing of the current fiscal year. "The future is tighter. We have no new revenues, so capacity comes from reserves or re-allocations."

By law, the board must have a spending blueprint in place by June 30, since July 1 marks the beginning of a new fiscal year. However, not all spending priorities have been ironed out.

The Executive Office is recommending an additional $10 million for the sheriff's department, even though Sheriff Stan Sniff told the board Monday that his ideal appropriations level to keep all operational components intact is $712.3 million -- $50 million more than what the treasury can bear, McDonnell said.

Supervisor Marion Ashley Tuesday pushed for an $18 million infusion to help cover the sheriff's bills, and the board seemed generally supportive.

Sniff said Monday that without at least a $30 million backfill, he would be operating with "bare bones" personnel.

The sheriff told supervisors that he had lost more than 200 positions through attrition -- retirements and transfers -- in the last fiscal year.

Although that has lowered some costs, the sheriff said it has also complicated management in that more pressure has been placed on existing personnel, who are logging extra hours to make up the difference.

Sniff said he had dissolved the Cold Case Homicide Team, cut staff dedicated to auto theft and off-road details and permitted patrol operations in the unincorporated communities to wither. Patrol staffing in unincorporated communities will slip back to a ratio of .75 deputies per 1,000 residents by the end of summer, the sheriff said. Prior to the Great Recession, the ratio was 1.2 per 1,000.

Sniff argued that he and his staff had been working to balance the agency's books, but internal service charges, including payroll administration, mounting costs associated with a consent decree that went into effect last year mandating medical reforms throughout the county's correctional system and personnel costs were straining resources.

The sheriff noted that, to date, the department has realized few returns from the public safety overhaul initiated last year under the board's $21 million contract with professional services firm KPMG.

Undersheriff Bill DiYorio re-affirmed that sentiment Tuesday during an exchange with Supervisor John Tavaglione, who has steadfastly supported the KPMG mission, saying he felt confident about the "product" the firm would deliver and that "leadership" would ultimately determine the success or failure of its recommended changes to sheriff's and other operations.

"We're doing our best to work with KPMG, but there's a lot of pushback," DiYorio said. "We hope we can find more cost savings that alleviate pressure on the county."

Supervisor Kevin Jeffries was dubious, saying "efficiencies haven't been proven." Jeffries also questioned the wisdom of more deficit spending in 2017-18, which appeared to be unavoidable given revenue forecasts.

The board last year set a reserve floor of $150 million, and McDonnell acknowledged that under the current spending formula, reserves would fall to about $175 million. It was just over $200 million a year ago.

"We go below that ($150 million), we're done," Ashley said. "We've got to make the right choices and prioritize, do what we need to do."

County Chief Executive Officer George Johnson said setting appropriations limits meant working to "balance competing priorities."

The board seemed comfortable with sparing both District Attorney Mike Hestrin and Public Defender Steve Harmon from having to make 6.5 percent cuts mandated for most other agencies under a fiscal austerity measure advocated by the Executive Office.

The D.A.'s office would receive about $4.11 million in additional general fund allocations, and the Office of the Public Defender would get about $2.3 million. However, the agencies will still have $11.5 million and $2 million in the red, respectively, going into 2017-18.

The 6.5 percent across-the-board reductions throughout county government were initially implemented in anticipation of a $42 million jump in costs tied to Gov. Jerry Brown's original plan to shift the bulk of In-Home Supportive Services expenditures from the state to localities. However, the governor backed off of the idea, opting instead to impose a modest increase in counties' cost-sharing.

According to McDonnell, agency-by-agency cuts are still needed to build up the county's depleted reserve pool and boost available revenue to sustain capital improvement projects, one of the largest being the $333.35 million John Benoit Detention Center in Indio.

More than half of the 600,000-square-foot facility will be operational by next summer and will eventually provide space for more than 1,600 inmates, compared to only 353 in the existing Indio Jail.

The total county budget for the next fiscal year is about 2 percent smaller than the one enacted for the current fiscal year -- $5.57 billion.

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