Putnam Lawmakers, Sheriff Spar Over Budget Process

PUTNAM COUNTY, NY — The Putnam County Legislature voted overwhelmingly against a Sheriff’s Department end-of-year budget transfer request. Lawmakers accused Putnam County Sheriff Robert Langley Jr. of unrealistic budgeting and said they wanted policy and procedure changes. Only one lawmaker voted to approve the transfers, and she told Patch it was "clearly partisan politics."

Both sides discussed the controversy in press releases.

Legislature Chairman Joseph Castellano said he was concerned about the transfer request and about amount of overtime in the Patrol Division.

"There has certainly been an increase in overtime and we don’t know why it is going higher and higher every year. We definitely need to have a better conversation with the Sheriff’s Department about that," he said. "Moving money from 40 different budget lines to cover a portion of this overtime is concerning to me, and it should be to all of us."

Legislator Ginny Nacerino criticized the Sheriff’s Department approach to budgeting.

"It begs the question of why in the twelfth month of this year there is so much left in these lines and whether these 40 lines were over-inflated," she said. "We can’t operate like this. It is not best practice."

Though the transfers were as usual on the legislative agenda to be voted on in public, Nacerino said she didn't think they were "openly transparent."

On the contrary, Langley said, money traditionally is and always has been transferred between budget lines in Putnam County not only at the end of the year but throughout the entire year.

"Budgets are estimates submitted during the Fall of the year preceding the next calendar year. They are estimates because no department can determine unanticipated costs a month or a year in advance," he said.

Lawmaker Paul Jonke accused the sheriff of disrespecting taxpayers and the legislature.

"This is not a public safety issue, this is a respect for taxpayers’ issue,” Jonke said. “We gave him the parameters within which he needed to work."

Langley said that his operations were fiscally responsible, and that he had in fact been working within the parameters of his budget.

"I held off purchasing various budgeted items until the end of the year to make sure money was available to purchase them. This is the reason I requested to transfer some money for purchases and did not purchase other items instead choosing to transfer other funds to Patrol overtime, which has been substantially underfunded for many years," he said.

He also pointed out that the lawmakers approved similar transfers in 2018.

Also, neither the patrol overtime nor the budget transfers would increase the tax levy or any taxpayer's tax bill. In fact, the Sheriff's Department has increased its revenue stream this year, he said.

"My office renegotiated the daily housing rate that the Putnam County Sheriff Department charges the United States Marshall’s Service to board in prisoners by generating an estimated additional $350,000 in revenue. This rate was established in 1992 and not renegotiated since. Moreover, our Civil Division increased its revenue by over 60% in 2019 by updating its policies and procedures to be consistent with existing laws," Langley said.

Still, Langley said he thought the Putnam County Board of Legislature was being fiscally responsible by publicly questioning the proposed budget transfers.

"Their role is to discuss through the individual committees and full Board of Legislature approval of the budgets of all County departments," he said.

But, he pointed out, "The County Executive, District Attorney, County Clerk and Sheriff are solely responsible for running the operations of their respective offices."

Only Legislator Nancy Montgomery voted in favor of the transfers. "The fiscal impact was zero," she said. "So I did a lot of research on past practices for transfers."

She looked at agendas and minutes from 2011 to 2017.

"It was a slow-drip process of moving money between budget lines, approved by the legislature and county executive, no questions asked," she said."But that was a Republican sheriff."

Langley narrowly defeated longtime Sheriff Don Smith in 2017.

Montgomery said in her experience in town and now county government, transfers within departments happen routinely at the end of the year. Plus, Montgomery told Patch, other end-of-year transfers are being approved by Putnam lawmakers.

The Legislature's Personnel Committee, which meets Wednesday, is being asked to approve three transfers to cover overtime for the Highway Department. "We approved a huge transfer for the Department of Social Services last night," she said.

On the other issue, overtime, Montgomery said she is concerned about how underfunded and understaffed the Putnam's Sheriff's Department is, compared to others across the country.

She said the legislature and county executive had set the situation up, cutting down the sheriff's 2019 budget proposal despite Langley's public warning that it would leave too few deputies to patrol the county and was an unavoidable path to overruns.

"Spending for road patrol overtime is nothing new. It has hovered around $100,000 every year," Montgomery said of her research. "Clearly this was partisan politics."