$upport Your Local $heriff
Marion County Sheriff Frank Anderson may be crying poverty, but from an intial look at his budget someone at the Sheriff’s department likes to spend money like a drunken sailor in a Vietnamese brothel.
As I told you earlier Anderson, requested a $26 million increase over last year’s budget. MCSD spent $84 million in 2007 and was on track to spend $91 million in 2008 and requested more than $111 million in 2009. That amount was cut back to about $85 million. After going through the budget on-line, here’s what I discovered.
Out of that $26 million increase, $17.5 million went to salaries and benefits. $8.889 million was for salaries, $2.2 million went for raises. He only spent $26 million on salaries in 2007, so why would he need $36 million in 2009? Unless he hired a bunch of people and now trying to get you to write checks that he can’t cash?
In addition, in 2008 MCSD only spent $44,000 on hospital supplies. It requested $1.1 million in 2009. That’s a lot of band-aids.
A lot of sheriff’s deputies must need new clothes, because Anderson went from spending $146,609 on uniforms in 2008 to wanting to spend more than $390,000 in 2009.
Someone at MCSD must also be using a lot of paper because printing costs went from just under $11,000 for 2008 to about $193,000 in 2009.
The rumors about Anderson wanting to buy new cars must be closer to the truth than I thought. His vehicle budget went from $11,000 in 2008 to $723,000 in 2009.
Tired? I hope not, there’s still more.
Anderson’s building security budget went from $0 in 2008 to $400,000 in 2009. I feel safer already.
They also must be expecting to get sued a lot over at the jail. They spent $275,000 on settlement payments in 2008 and expect to spend $2.1 million in 2009. I’m definitely practicing the wrong kind of law.
A lot people must also be getting sick over at the Jail too because medical and hospital expenses are going up from $3.02 million in 2008 to $6.2 million in 2009.
And those pesky cars and vans showed up again under capital expenditures. Anderson only spent $114,000 on cars in 2008 and nothing on vans. Those numbers went up to almost $1.7 million for cars and $740,000 for vans in 2009.
I’m sure the Sheriff has a pretty good explanation for all this. I’ll be watching when he testifies at his budget hearing in a few weeks.
By the way, if you think I am pulling this all out of my rear, you can see the numbers here for yourself.
