Looking behind sheriff’s budget issues, assertions

By Bill Thompson, Ocala Star-Banner, Fla.

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Aug. 17--Sheriff Chris Blair is back before the Marion County Commission asking for an $8 million hike for his 2015 budget, requiring a property tax increase, a year after a bitter funding dispute left him with little to grow law enforcement resources.

Again, the sheriff and his top advisers have lots of numbers and shocking stories to buttress their arguments. And, like last year, some of those facts are solid and others appear questionable under further scrutiny. The Star-Banner examined a number of the claims.

The sheriff's comments were drawn from multiple public presentations and statements, including the agency's five-year plan unveiled in May and referenced during last month's budget sessions.

Low starting pay

Blair's take: One recurring theme that Blair emphasized last year, and continues to press this year, is how little beginning deputies are paid.

On May 22, 2013, during the first meeting of what evolved into a protracted budget dispute with the County Commission, Blair pointed out that Marion County ranked in the "bottom 10" among Florida sheriff's offices for starting pay for patrol deputies.

He was correct. Florida Department of Law Enforcement reports show that for 2012, the latest statistics available at the time of Blair's presentation, Marion's entry salary was seventh lowest among Florida's 67 sheriff's offices.

The rest of the story: Instead of sticking with "bottom 10," the sheriff and his staff provided variations on the theme that made the situation look a bit worse than the data supported.

At a July 9, 2013, budget workshop, Blair told the board at one point that his new deputies ranked "in the bottom five of the state."

A month later, Maj. Don Maines, one of Blair's top brass, told local talk radio host Bob Rose that deputies' starting pay ranked 62nd-lowest among Florida's 67 counties. Maines then challenged county commissioners to reduce their own pay to 62nd out of 67 county commissions.

In a recent interview, two of Blair's top aides noted that Marion's beginning pay remains mired near the bottom, lumped in with counties having one-twentieth of Marion's population.

But that doesn't jibe with Blair's own payroll records.

The sheriff's staff told the board in July 2013 that nine deputies were making the minimum salary. Yet a special committee led by County Commissioner Stan McClain found among the 21 patrol deputies at the bottom tier, the lowest-paid among them will earn a base salary of $32,037 this year.

In 2013, about 26 counties had starting deputy salaries below that, FDLE reports show.

And the average salary for that group of Marion deputies was $36,412, the report stated.

"It is fairly clear that the continued use of an artificially low starting salary as representative of the need for higher deputy pay cannot be supported by the actual salary data," the McClain committee concluded.

Secondly, it's important to note that Blair sets the salary levels. If he believes the entry-level rate is too low, there is no barrier to him changing it.

The Sheriff's Office recently furnished data indicating that Blair has hired 10 new patrol deputies since taking office. Four of them were paid $31,086 or more -- or at least $2,566 more than the minimum. (One of them has subsequently left the Sheriff's Office.)

Blair told the commission at one point that was because those officers had prior experience at other law enforcement agencies.

Yet the same report also shows that other new hires within the agency, such as the volunteer coordinator, the culinary arts instructor at the jail and accounting clerks, make more than the salary set for new deputies.

Maj. Gregg Jerald, Blair's administrative bureau chief, said shifting the budget around to pay rookie deputies more would eat into the pot of funding available to hire new patrolmen.

Capt. Jimmy Pogue, Blair's spokesman, added in an interview that raising the pay for new deputies would create "compression" by advancing their pay closer to more senior personnel who, in turn, would demand more money.

"The fix," Pogue said, "is for the Board of County Commissioners to address it and change it."

Unfunded liabilities

Blair's take: In May 2013, the sheriff told commissioners that he faced "unfunded" liabilities totaling almost $10.1 million at the end of the 2012 fiscal year. Blair was referring to what it would cost to pay all of his staff's accrued vacation, sick leave and compensatory time.

The sheriff emphasized this issue by pointing out that the liability had nearly doubled since 2005, when it amounted to about $5.8 million.

Blair attributed the growth of these accounts to a manpower shortage and a bare-bones overtime budget.

The rest of the story: The 2012 liability amount actually was the lowest it had been since 2009. Under Blair's predecessor, Ed Dean, the total had dropped for two consecutive years after peaking in 2010 at $11.6 million.

Blair later dismissed the sick leave issue, which represented an estimated $5.2 million, or 52 percent, of the total unfunded liability. He told the board at one point that it was "just going to take care of itself" per the Sheriff's Office's policies.

Blair may have backpedaled on that aspect because he helped contribute to the problem.

Upon taking office, Blair called two of his key advisers -- Chief Deputy Fred LaTorre and Maj. Tommy Bibb -- out of retirement to serve as some of his top brass.

When he did so, Blair also reinstated the sick leave they had accrued upon retirement. At the time of the budget hearings, their combined accrued sick leave totaled about $160,000.

Blair's aides noted in a recent interview that the sheriff made great strides during his first year, instituting steps that reduced the unfunded liability by $700,000. The current level is the lowest since 2007.

"Just because there was some improvement doesn't mean having the unfunded liability is not hazardous to our budget," Pogue explained. "It is a problem."

Staffing levels

Blair's take: Blair repeatedly declared last year, and continues to say, that fixing the manpower shortage among deputies is his top priority.

Inadequate staffing prevents his deputies from having sufficient backup and from responding more quickly to citizens' complaints, even urgent ones, the sheriff has said.

Blair cited deputy-to-population ratios among Florida's counties as the best yardstick. During commission meetings in May and July 2013, and in reports to the board last year, Blair maintained that his agency had 0.71 deputies for every 1,000 residents.

That was a long way from the state average of 1.7 per 1,000 people, he said at the time, and put Marion County in the "bottom five" in terms of the worst staffing ratios among sheriff's offices across Florida. He also repeated the "bottom five" ranking to the Star-Banner in an article about a commission review of his budget.

"We have a shortage of manpower. Look at ratio per 1,000 citizens in this county. It's obvious that we're short," Blair told the board on July 9, 2013. "The numbers speak loud and clear that we need deputy sheriffs."

The rest of the story: FDLE reports reflect a different story. From 2010 through 2013, according to state records, the Sheriff's Office fielded about 1 deputy per 1,000 county residents, which put Marion's rank about ninth-lowest in the state.

Thus, Marion's ratio was about 30 percent higher than Blair claimed, and was comparable with equivalent or larger population centers, such as Collier, Lee and Pasco counties.

Blair explained his ratio at that July 9, 2013, commission meeting, telling Commissioner Earl Arnett that it was calculated by using the county's whole population. That includes the cities of Ocala, Belleview and Dunnellon, each of which have their own police departments.

FDLE, however, uses the portion of a county's population served by a sheriff's patrol deputies, or the area where they have jurisdiction.

On May 7, in presenting the department's new five-year strategic plan to the County Commission, Maj. Jerald said the 2012 ratio was 0.95 and had dipped to 0.94 for last year -- figures reflected by FDLE.

Jerald said the Sheriff's Office would need to hire 171 new deputies -- not 286, as the sheriff maintained last year -- to achieve parity with the state average.

Despite Blair's previous explanation to Arnett, and the sheriff's tying that number to the state average, Jerald now says the 0.71 ratio referred to the number of patrol deputies below the rank of sergeant who work across the county.

That number is no longer used, he added, because there is no way to compare that to other sheriff's offices and that data is not tracked by FDLE.

Number of murders

Blair's take: Blair told the commission on July 2, 2013, that homicidal violence in Marion County in 2012 was the worst he's seen. And that's saying something.

Blair spent 35 years with the Sheriff's Office before being elected top cop in 2012. He spent much of his career as a detective and leading the agency's major crimes unit, the post he held upon retiring in 2010. Blair had even assembled a "cold case" squad to reopen old homicide cases.

Blair told the board that day that he had never witnessed such violence as had been reported in 2012 when, he said, there were 20 homicides in Marion County.

That 2012 total, he added, was "the highest in the history of the Marion County Sheriff's Office."

"I tell you," he emphasized to the board, "that's the highest number we've had."

Blair reiterated that at the board's first public hearing on the budget on Sept. 12, 2013. The number of homicides in 2012, he said then, was "the highest it's been in the county."

The sheriff, when pressed by Commissioner Kathy Bryant at one budget session, insisted that the homicide totals he presented pertained only to cases handled by the Sheriff's Office.

The rest of the story: Blair's claim is refuted by FDLE's annual crime data from state and local law enforcement agencies.

Over the past 14 years, the most murders reported by the Sheriff's Office in one year was 15 in 2008.

According to FDLE, 21 murders were committed within Marion County in 2012, which was the highest total over the span covered by state reports. But only 14 of those slayings happened within the Sheriff's Office's jurisdiction. Six occurred in Ocala. One was reported in Belleview.

The sheriff's new strategic plan states that the Sheriff's Office ranked 23rd-highest in Florida in handling major crimes last year, "with 20 murders occurring in 2013."

But the FDLE report for 2013 indicates there were 17 homicides in Marion, 11 of which were handled by the Sheriff's Office.

Jerald said in an interview that FDLE "tracks cases, not bodies," meaning the state would count a murder with multiple victims as one case.

FDLE spokesman Steve Arthur rebuffed that assertion.

"Homicides, like all persons crimes, are counted per victim NOT per incident/case number," he wrote in an email.

Jerald maintained that Blair's 2012 figure was accurate, saying that the Sheriff's Office "investigated" 20 homicides in 2012.

Jerald's answer, however, highlighted the fact that the sheriff's five-year plan contradicts itself.

He pointed to one page that noted there were "12 homicides with 14 victims" in Marion last year. Yet the section describing the work of Blair's new Tactical Investigations Unit observed that Marion had 20 murders during 2013.

More crime or less crime?

Blair's take: During last year's budget sessions, the sheriff suggested that the public was increasingly at risk from a rising tide of violent crime beyond homicides.

At different points in the budget process he challenged claims that the county's crime rate was dropping. He pointed out that investigations of homicides, sex crimes and other violent offenses were "very high" and outpacing last year's totals.

For example, Blair said last year there were 441 "cases" assigned to the Major Crimes Unit over the first five months of 2013, compared with 368 over the same period in 2012.

Citing a similar year-to-year comparison of sex crimes during that time frame, Blair told the board 321 such cases were reported in 2013, or up from 228 from the prior year.

"Try to explain that to those victims," Blair said at the July 2, 2013, commission meeting, scoffing at critics who questioned why a bigger budget was needed if crime was dropping. "I don't believe they would agree."

The sheriff's prophecy appeared to come to pass by the end of the year.

Cases reported to Major Crimes investigators ascended to "record highs" in 2013, the agency's five-year plan declares, with 1,055 such reports, roughly three per day.

It's important to note that the Sheriff's Office, in this context, refers to "cases," not just "crimes." Sometimes, a major crime is investigated but the evidence does not support charging someone with a crime.

The rest of the story: FDLE reports don't track cases. They track crimes. And crime has been going down in Marion County, reflecting statewide and national trends.

The state measures a community's "crime index" by tallying certain violent offenses: murder, rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, larceny and vehicle theft.

Between 2000 and 2011, the number of major crimes for the Sheriff's Office, excluding crimes reported to city and state law enforcement agencies, averaged 6,257 annually.

Marion's number peaked in 2007 at 6,623.

The volume plummeted in 2012, when 5,201 such crimes were reported by the Sheriff's Office. Last year the index, as it is known in law enforcement circles, dropped again, to 4,942.

In other words, the number of major crimes has plunged 25 percent since 2007.

The sheriff now takes credit for the safer landscape.

"(U)nits such as the Tactical Investigations Unit and the Fugitive Apprehension Unit, were initiated by Sheriff Blair upon taking office and are one of the driving factors in the 5.1 percent decrease in Marion County's index crime rate during Sheriff Blair's first year in office," the agency's five-year plan states.

In his written response to the Star-Banner, Jerald contrasted his boss' crime-fighting capabilities and tactics to those of Blair's predecessor.

The drop in the crime index during Blair's first year exceeded the yearly average reduction of 4.2 percent that occurred during Sheriff Dean's administration from 2000 to 2012, Jerald wrote.

"Given these remarkable results, a reasonable person would look to see if anything was done differently," Jerald noted. And it was, he added, spotlighting Blair's get-tough approach with the creation of the specialized units to fight street crimes and arrest fugitives wanted on outstanding warrants.

Yet when asked whether the public should feel safer or remain worried about crime, Blair's aides hedged.

"The sheriff is doing everything he can to maximize the resources we have. The public should feel good about that," Jerald said in an interview.

Response time

Blair's take: Despite a reduced crime rate, sheriff's officials argue that deputies are busier than ever.

One metric, cited most recently in the sheriff's strategic plan, is the number of "calls for service."

In 2013, according to the report, deputies answered 309,027 calls for help. That was up 80 percent from the 173,225 that were fielded in 2003.

Yet, the Sheriff's Office states, the agency has roughly the same number of "boots on the ground," as Blair likes to refer to his patrolmen, as a decade ago.

The strategic plan points out that activity does not show up in crime stats.

And sheriff's officials, despite repeatedly insisting in 2013 that crime was a growing problem, insist that crime data offer an imperfect picture of how many deputies are needed to keep the peace.

"(R)elying solely on crime rates as an indicator of law enforcement staffing needs is an unreliable management tool and is not believed to be used by any law enforcement agency in the country as an indicator of staffing needs," the plan says.

Better instead to use the ratio of calls per 1,000 residents, sheriff's officials say.

Blair illustrates that issue with another key indicator: response times.

As of last October, the most urgent calls were answered on average in about 11 minutes, according to the strategic plan.

That nearly doubled the targeted response time of six minutes -- a mark counties like Volusia and Seminole, both of which have significantly more deputies, have no problem achieving, the plan observes.

To underscore this point, Blair and his staff related for the commission at a May 2014 workshop three emergencies where poor staffing left people in peril.

Those included a woman, eight months pregnant and being battered by a boyfriend, who waited 26 minutes for assistance. Another woman cowered in her home for 37 minutes as a drunk shot up her neighborhood, despite her living five minutes from a sheriff's annex station.

The third case discussed by Maj. Jerald involved a deputy who was shot in an incident in Ocklawaha. Jerald said the bullet struck the officer's watch, and his face was injured by flying glass.

Although the suspect was shooting at the deputy, Jerald noted for the commission, 10 minutes elapsed before a backup officer arrived.

Jerald told the board that such lengthy response times are an almost daily occurrence, and he indicated that the Ocklawaha shooting happened last year.

The rest of the story: Information supplied by the Sheriff's Office itself shows the latter case actually occurred in 2009 -- before Blair became sheriff, when he was in charge of the Major Crimes Unit.

The suspect, Thomas Tavernier, 80 at the time, was arrested in October 2009 and later sentenced to life in prison. He remains there today.

Jerald, in an interview, supplied other examples just from July in which victims, even of serious offenses, waited 30 minutes or longer for help.

Jerald told the Star-Banner that the Tavernier case was intended to refer to a May 2011 comment Sheriff Dean had made about the agency being "stretched" as far as it could be without further risk to deputies and the public.

"It was my fault in the delivery," said Jerald. "But these things do happen every day."

Lost jobs

Blair's take: Nearly three months ago, Blair told the commission that resolving the response time issue had just one answer: adding manpower.

With that in mind, the board is trying to understand his personnel issues. But over the past year, in various forums, the sheriff cannot seem to nail down this number. Some of that has to do with the terms used and the changing staff levels.

For example, in an open letter to the community that the Star-Banner published on Sept. 8, 2013, Blair noted that budget cuts instituted since 2007 "have shaved $8 million dollars and 166 crucial jobs" at the Sheriff's Office.

Less than three weeks later, at the commission's public hearing to adopt the current budget, Blair reminded the board that since 2007 the Sheriff's Office had "lost approximately" 150 jobs -- the same number cited at the July 9, 2013, budget session.

By this past May, the number had changed again. The agency's five-year strategic plan referenced "approximately 190 personnel positions lost at the (Sheriff's Office) since 2008."

According to Jerry Holland, the Sheriff's Office's support services bureau chief, the current budget funds 758 workers. At its peak, in 2007, the department had slots for 918 staffers.

Essentially, as the recession worsened, 160 positions were eliminated to meet the County Commission's demands for lowered spending.

"They have paid the ultimate price," the sheriff told the commission about those cuts at a Sept. 26, 2013, hearing.

The rest of the story: There is a sharp distinction between a "position" and a job -- an important consideration when contemplating who paid the "ultimate price," as the sheriff said.

"The (Sheriff's Office) has never laid off any employees," Holland said in an email.

Rather, as employees retired, quit, or got fired since 2007, they were not replaced, Holland explained. And as the years unfolded, those spots in the budget were erased.

Jerald said that the number changes almost daily and that the agency now has about 728 workers. That means 190 positions axed from the budget over the past seven years.

He suggested Blair was making "generalized" comments about the personnel reductions and emphasized that Blair had never said anyone was "laid off."

The point remains, Jerald added, that the Sheriff's Office is "significantly understaffed and strained."

Illegal layoffs

Blair's take: When the County Commission sat down with the sheriff last year to review his first budget, and its initial $17.4 million proposed funding increase, Blair said everything in the spending plan was must-have.

The board immediately balked, and Blair later attempted to compromise by halving his request to about $8 million.

Commissioners reiterated that they could not live with that either, since all county-level elected officials, Blair included, had agreed to hold spending flat for 2014.

The sheriff then punted to the board by refusing to make any additional spending reductions.

That led to Commissioner McClain's committee, which not only whittled Blair's budget down to the 2013 level, but recommended another $2.4 million in cuts, including laying off personnel.

Blair denounced the proposal in a letter as "troubling" and "reckless."

He also maintained that the commission would break state laws if it followed the panel's recommendations.

Blair alleged that state laws say the board could not reduce the Sheriff's Office's budget below the prior year, although past commissions had "ignored" this provision by cutting spending for then-Sheriff Dean over the previous five years.

The sheriff also argued that he was handcuffed by a law called the Career Service Act from eliminating jobs, as the committee had suggested. That was a point he had made prior to sending the letter in late September.

At the July 9, 2013, commission workshop, Blair told the board, "I cannot do anything to anyone at the Marion County Sheriff's Office. It's impossible" because of the law.

Chief Deputy Fred LaTorre added, "We can't go in with a butcher knife and cut people out like you can in the private sector. We can only reduce those positions through attrition."

In the letter he submitted later, Blair countered that budgetary considerations were not a legal reason for axing personnel, and that doing so would be illegal and invite wrongful termination lawsuits.

The rest of the story: According to County Attorney Guy Minter, the sheriff was engaging in a selective reading of the statutes. In fact, Minter alleged that Blair excluded sentences in the laws he had cited.

One statute, Minter wrote in a memo to the commission, states that a county commission can "amend, modify, increase, or reduce" a sheriff's budget.

As for the Career Service Act, Minter observed that a provision in that law said nothing within it affected the "budget-making powers" of a county commission.

Minter noted that following the Sheriff's Office's interpretation would mean county sheriff's offices would be the only agencies in Florida that never had to fear a budget cut.

"It may be observed that one reaches a different conclusion when one is provided the context of the quotes offered by the sheriff," Minter penned.

Jerald, who also serves as Blair's general counsel, and who authored the letter, sticks by his original position.

He observed that in 2011 the Legislature amended the budgeting law to specify that a proposed budget could be cut, but that the previous year's spending plan provided a floor that could not be breached.

"It's never been litigated, but multiple sheriff's offices are looking for the right circumstances," Jerald said in an interview. "The legislative intent was to insulate public safety from economic and political distresses."

Jerald does not maintain that either Dean or previous commissions broke the law by cutting the agency's budget.

Yet a Senate staff analysis of the bill that implemented the 2011 change referenced by Jerald noted a slightly different take. The primary intent of the measure was to force sheriffs to detail the costs of protecting the public in six broad budget areas.

"Although a county can increase or reduce by lump sums the items, a county cannot dictate how the money allocated to an individual item should be used," the report said.

Under state law, sheriffs can appeal budget issues to the governor and Florida Cabinet.

Revenue drop

Blair's take: Earlier this month, the County Commission scuttled the idea of a local sales tax as a way to pay for various projects. A revised plan will be considered Wednesday.

One possible recipient for that revenue could have been the Sheriff's Office, and Blair's staff has argued that the sheriff deserves credit for stoking the idea of a new sales tax a year ago as the commission was preparing the 2014 budget.

An influx of fresh cash was necessary because the agency's revenue stream had dried up.

At a board meeting on July 2, 2013, after Commissioner McClain suggested that the department had remained well funded despite the recession, Blair replied, "We have lost 39 percent in revenue, (that) is what we have lost at the Sheriff's Office."

In that context, one could conclude that comment referred to the agency's 2013 budget relative to its pre-recession peak.

The rest of the story: Blair's comment was true for only one category of funding: the Fine and Forfeiture fund, which generates about 10 percent of his agency's revenue.

Revenue in that account did drop 39 percent between 2008 and 2013, records show. Yet an analysis by county Budget Director Michael Tomich revealed that the Sheriff's Office's overall budget declined 12 percent over that same time.

The spending plan peaked at $76.2 million in 2008, at the tail end of the economic boom, and steadily dropped to $67.1 million by 2013.

Tomich's report also showed that all other county-level elected officials -- clerk of courts, elections supervisor, tax collector and property appraiser -- had absorbed bigger, recession-related budget hits than the sheriff, in terms of a percentage drop in revenue.

The court clerk lost 15 percent; elections supervisor, 24 percent; property appraiser, 26 percent; tax collector, 22 percent.

Jerald acknowledged in an interview that the Fine and Forfeiture fund was the only one shaved as much as the sheriff indicated, but he countered that the comparison is inappropriate.

Law enforcement is unique, he said, because its job is to protect the public around the clock and thus cannot be compared to services performed by those other constitutional officers.

He also noted that McClain was mistaken about the fiscal health of the Sheriff's Office.

In 2000, according to Jerald, the agency received 17.7 percent of the overall county budget. In 2013, that ratio had fallen to 13.3 percent.

"Clearly, the priority given to law enforcement has decreased," he said.

Top salaries

Blair's take: As a candidate in 2012, Blair thundered against the "bureaucratic empire," as he said in one debate, erected by then-Sheriff Dean and Dean's top staffer, former Undersheriff Dan Kuhn, Blair's opponent in the Republican primary that year.

The organizational chart featured a "ridiculous" ratio of bosses to workers, Blair said at the time.

Candidate Blair argued that, as sheriff, he could do more for less, telling debate audiences on at least two occasions that he could put those "boots on the ground" without higher or new taxes.

He could accomplish that by hacking away at the command staff, he said, because the waste was evident.

Before voters, Blair repeatedly flogged his predecessor for exorbitant salaries paid to those at the top of the hierarchy.

He maintained that the top 21 supervisors at the Sheriff's Office were collectively paid $2.3 million.

Blair repeated the statistic five times during a GOP primary debate in August 2012. It also re-emerged in an article in the June edition of Ocala Magazine.

"We ran on that," Blair said of the campaign talking point, according to an interview published on the magazine's website last month. "We were too top heavy."

The rest of the story: According to figures Blair's own staff provided during last year's budget hearings, he was somewhat off the mark.

As of Sept. 30, 2012, then-Sheriff Dean's 20-member command staff made a combined $1.97 million, including Dean's salary.

Blair's analysis gets closer to his stated amount -- to almost $2.1 million -- if you include the pay of one of Dean's top brass, Tom Wilder, a former chief of staff. Wilder, though, had retired in April 2012, months before those election debates, and although funding for his post would have remained in the budget, Dean did not promote anyone into that job.

Jerald said the $300,000 or so difference between what Blair said and the actual number could be benefits costs.

Beyond that, Blair's top aides maintain he made good on his campaign pledge.

In all, Jerald said, since Blair took over in January 2013 he has eliminated 24 top staff posts, saving $1.8 million.

Yet he was blind-sided by state-mandated increases in retirement and health insurance costs that ate up all but $100,000 of that.

Although the salary information seemingly would have been available through public records requests, Jerald noted, "He did not have perfect information about the state of the agency" as a candidate.

Contact Bill Thompson at 867-4117 or [email protected].

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