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Finance defends vacancy-savings practice, shows large sheriff's-year underspend
Summary
Deputy director Michael Thompson presented an office-by-office vacancy-savings analysis and said the method is a standard forecasting tool; he reported the sheriff's department had saved roughly $47.3 million through nine months and that $18,879,270 budgeted for the sheriff in FY24 was not used.
Deputy Director Michael Thompson presented the county's vacancy-savings analysis and defended the budgeting practice as consistent with public-finance guidance.
Thompson pointed commissioners to the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) guidance on forecasting and vacancy assumptions and walked through an Excel analysis showing nine-month results through March 30. "The sheriff's department vacancy savings amount: 9 months into the fiscal year, they have... saved 47,300,000," Thompson said, adding the sheriff's office had exceeded its budgeted vacancy-savings amount by $3,000,000 and that $18,879,270 was budgeted for the sheriff in FY24 and remained unused.
Thompson recommended that commissioners take a net approach when considering additional funding requests—subtracting previous underspends from new asks where appropriate—and offered follow-up briefings for commissioners who wanted deeper dives into the data.
