Coronavirus ‘swap’: Supervisors told why funds for Sacramento sheriff’s avoids county cuts

After receiving heat this week over the expenditure of federal coronavirus aid to law enforcement, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors took the issue head-on at Tuesday’s meeting.

“What the County of Sacramento does poorly is tell our story ... we never get out there what it is we’re doing very well, and I think that has led to a problem today,” said Supervisor Patrick Kennedy, who represents areas of Sacramento city’s southern neighborhoods. “That lack of communication with the community, that lack of transparency is biting us.”

The issue at the heart of Tuesday’s public meeting is that Sacramento County has spent the vast majority of its $181 million in federal coronavirus relief funds so far on covering its Sheriff’s Office payroll, and the salaries and benefits of other public safety officers.

In the last fiscal year, which ended in June, the Sheriff’s Office received $104 million in funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

But that money isn’t a surplus or an increase to the sheriff’s budget. It’s a “swap,” said County Executive Navdeep Gill.

By using CARES Act funding for the Sheriff’s Office budget, it allowed $104 million to carry over for the next year for the county’s general fund, the account used to pay for most county departments and services, he said. So at the end of June, the county had $161 million sitting in the bank for the upcoming fiscal year, as opposed to $19 million, according to meeting documents.

“Again, this does not represent new spending, it simply freed up general fund resources,” Gill said in a letter to the supervisors.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the county budget hard, causing an estimated $170 million in lost tax revenue.

“Revenue reductions of this magnitude, if not mitigated in some way, would result in budget reductions to virtually all general fund departments on the scale of those required during the Great Recession,” Gill said.

Gill said the U.S. Treasury Department explicitly allowed the federal funding to be used for the payroll of existing public safety and public health employees “whose services are substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency.”

Another criticism the county faced this week was the perceived lack of funding for public health needs in the midst of a pandemic. Of the CARES Act funding, the county spent less than 1% on public health expenses incurred during the pandemic, including nearly $10,000 on contact tracing, $73,000 on personal protective equipment and $23,000 on a new refrigeration unit for the Coroner’s Office.

Chief Fiscal Officer Britt Ferguson said that figure represented spending between March and June, and is ramping up during the current fiscal year.

By the end of Tuesday’s meeting, the board had already authorized an additional $13.5 million for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.

Dr. Peter Beilenson, director of health services for the county, said while the COVID-19 case numbers are “stable right now,” he lacks an adequate number of personnel for contact tracing. But he expects an additional 60 people to be added to his staff soon under new funding.

An additional $20 million is expected to be spent through June 2021 on other county programs related to the pandemic, including homeless response plan, business navigators, and community based testing among other initiatives.

“Anything the departments needed, they had a go light regardless of the color of money,” Gill said.