Bexar County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved about $2.2 million to pay for more than 48,500 mandatory overtime hours for deputies in the county jail.
The amount of overtime from October and anticipated through January is largely consistent with figures from last year, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said, as the benefits of recently approved hiring and retention incentives have yet to pay off.
“We’ll start seeing [the benefits] gradually,” Salazar told the San Antonio Report after the vote.
By increasing detention deputies, the sheriff hopes to decrease mandatory overtime. Forcing deputies to work overtime is both expensive and negatively affects their morale, officials have said.
The Bexar County Adult Detention Center still has a little more than 200 staff vacancies — subtracting vacancies that will be filled by cadets who are receiving training and certification in the pipeline, he said. While the jail population has decreased by about 400 inmates over the last year, a significant portion of the 4,200 population — 519 as of Tuesday — requires intense supervision due to mental health issues.
“In late December through late January, we’ll actually be graduating three classes — boom, boom, boom — like almost back-to-back” of new deputies, Salazar said. Once they receive several weeks of additional on-the-job training, they can then be put to work in the jail or out on the streets.
In August, commissioners approved significant salary increases for most deputies. Part of the agreement allowed the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office to place newly hired deputies directly on patrol, without requiring them to first serve two years at the jail as detention officers through a so-called “straight to the streets” policy. After 34 weeks of training and acquisition of a peace officer’s license, aspiring deputies can skip detention if they prefer.
The program also creates a path for current detention officers to transition to patrol, but it incentivizes people to remain at the jail by giving them preference for more competitive patrol jobs in the future if they serve at the jail first.
During a typical month last year, Salazar said the department would see 20 resignations. That has decreased to about 10 last month, he said. “But we actually then rehired eight people during that same time period — people that had left months ago. So we netted two resignations.”
It’s unclear when or if the requests for mandatory overtime funding will decrease, Salazar said. The fiscal year 2024 budget included $9.8 million for those costs. After Tuesday’s expenditure, there is about $7.5 million left.
“Right now it’s trending downward,” he said. “What we’re hoping to do is come back and go: ‘Hey, we didn’t spend it all.'”
Bexar County staff had advocated for a much smaller overtime package, about $437,000 for the October-January timeframe because an increasing number of detention deputies are opting to get compensation for mandatory overtime work with Fair Standards Labor Act (FSLA) payouts.
The FSLA payments, which many non-uniformed employees also qualify for, are typically received by deputies faster than mandatory overtime and don’t have to be approved by commissioners, according to a fiscal note prepared by the county’s Budget and Finance Department.
“When we count [FSLA] in, the amount that’s needed for paying overtime, we estimate, would be much less,” said County Manager David Smith, later adding that in fiscal year 2023, the county paid deputies and non-uniformed employees about $13 million in FSLA overtime.
Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3) noted the large discrepancy between what the sheriff requested and county staff proposed.
“How do we reconcile that?” Moody asked Salazar and Chief Deputy Joel Janssen
Staff from the county and BCSO define vacancies differently, Janssen said. “I think we need to sit down [with the budget department to find] one set of numbers” to present to commissioners.
Regardless of funding source, Salazar said he’s hopeful that detention deputies won’t be forced to work long shifts.
“[Mandatory overtime] has been an issue around this place for 15 to 20 years,” he said. “I don’t expect to solve it overnight. But we’re certainly heading in the right direction.”
