San Bernardino/Riverside Emergency Agencies Fight to Keep Services

As the economy continues to sputter, local emergency service agencies are feeling the pinch as counties push to cut deficits by cutting budgets.

Most recently, Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff announced additional deputies are getting layoff warning notices as the county prepares to fill the department's $17 to $60 million budget deficit.

As many as 200 correctional and patrol deputies may be issued pink slips between July 1 and Aug. 10 depending on how the department manages the deficit, Sniff said recently.

The next round of budget hearings is June 13, officials said.

Sniff said the layoff warnings are necessary to give personnel as much advance notice as possible about the worst-case scenario.

And Sniff reiterated his position that the county Executive Office had placed him in an untenable situation, leaving no alternative under the county's deficit-reduction plan but to chop positions and potentially shutter facilities.

"To layoff any of our employees is a travesty and an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in the face of dangerous times in many areas we serve,'' the sheriff said in a statement. "To give up jail capacity, precipitously drop patrol levels in the unincorporated areas, mothball any of our 10 patrol stations, or give up critical multi-agency task forces ... right now is very poor public policy and wasteful of already scarce public safety resources.''

Riverside County Sheriff's takes its place among a myriad of county agencies struggling with major deficits. On Thursday, San Bernardino County Sheriff's, which provides police services to Loma Linda, announced it would be closing it records division to the public every Friday because of a shortage of staff.

San Bernardino Sheriff Rod Hoops is facing some $26.5 million in cuts and has opted to not to fill vacated positions and halt the process of creating a new crime lab for the department as a way to cut costs and save personnel. 

In April, San Bernardino County Fire, which provides response aid support services representatives opted to accept a 7 percent salary reduction, made possible by reducing retirement pickup, a 50 percent reduction in salary step increases and a capped medical subsidy that applies toward retirement calculations, according to a county news release. The cuts go into effect July 2.

“The county cities that we serve have definitely been impacted by the budget situation,” said Don Trapp, executive vice president for Local 935 and a San Bernardino County Fire captain in Bloomington. He spoke about the issue in late April. “Our goal is to provide the best service we can absolutely provide. So when it came to the decision between service reduction and us giving concessions, it was an easy answer for us. We wanted to try to work on concessions that we could live with and also maintain a service delivery we always do.”

The city departments, such as Colton Police and fire, are also struggling. Eight officers were laid off. And the fire department made plans to close one station on a rotating basis to avoid laying off firefighters.

Since May 13, Sniff has projected upwards of 500 positions would have to be slashed throughout the next fiscal year.

Sniff said 100 pink slips would be handed out by July 13.

The Riverside District Attorney's Office and Fire Department are also facing budget shortfalls.

All Riverside County agencies are absorbing cuts, some as high as 25 percent, to comply with the board's deficit reduction mandate that calls for an end to depleting reserves to balance the county's budget every year. Reserves have been cut in half since 2007 as property tax revenues plummeted.

The Sheriff's Department consumes the largest share of general fund appropriations.

The Executive Office has set a spending threshold of around $225 million for the agency, translating to a 3 percent budget cut compared to the current fiscal year, according to a City News Service report.

Sniff has said the actual cut is several times that amount because of revenue losses elsewhere, including Proposition 172 public safety sales tax income, the report said.

The sheriff said during an April 4 budget hearing he had been under pressure from the board to expand his ranks to staff expanded wings of the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning and maintain service levels elsewhere, putting his department further in the hole, according to City News.

Last week, Sniff said he could possibly whittle the 2011-12 shortfall down to $17 million, based on a meeting with Executive Office staff that promised an alternative approach to the funding gap. However on Friday, the sheriff seemed less optimistic, saying the conference had been “effectively forced'' by Supervisors Marion Ashley and
 Jeff Stone, and no resolution had been reached, according to City News Service.