Amid what Sheriff Calvin Hayden has called “emergency” staffing levels, the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners on Thursday voted to recommend a proposal to raise both the starting and maximum salaries for Johnson County Sheriff’s Office deputies.
- Under the plan presented by county staff at Thursday’s meeting, starting deputy pay would be boosted from $49,939 to $55,120, based on a new hourly rate of $26.50.
- Deputies could also earn a maximum of about $91,300 under the plan.
Driving the news: At Thursday’s meeting, the commission’s committee of the whole agreed to consider the increase after lengthy discussion about low staffing levels across county public safety positions.
- The discussion primarily focused on Johnson County Sheriff’s Office deputies, but also included county detention officers, corrections officers, medical examiners, forensic scientists, EMTs and paramedics.
Background: Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden said his office currently has 69 deputy vacancies out of roughly 680 total deputies.
- Hayden said this has led to a number of operational changes, including reduced community policing and increased mandatory overtime.
- In response to public safety staffing shortages, the county previously approved $4.6 million in retention bonuses for sheriff’s staffers and corrections workers.
- The county manager’s office also temporarily reallocated 10 county workers to the sheriff’s office for the rest of 2022.
Key quote: “We are wringing our people out with overtime,” Hayden said. “With the way our population is growing, we could use more deputies. We’re growing like crazy, but our public safety isn’t.”
Bigger picture: Law enforcement staffing shortages have been a nationwide phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they’ve been an ongoing point of discussion in Johnson County.
- During public comment periods at recent board meetings, residents have often voiced support for Hayden and advocated for more funding for his office.
- Many of the same residents have also praised Hayden for his ongoing investigation of recent election results for which the sheriff has offered no evidence.
- “I think you all need to find where we can get the money or where it’s currently sitting to be able to give him the funds he needs,” Overland Park resident Jeff Levine said at Thursday’s meeting. “Johnson County should be the first in sheriff compensation, not dead last or somewhere in the middle.”
Local context: While the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office’s minimum salary is higher than a number of the county’s local municipalities, the department’s current maximum salary of $81,432 per year is lower than most of Johnson County’s local police departments.
- For example, Overland Park Police’s current maximum salary is $85,098 per year, and the Leawood Police Department’s current maximum salary is $91,237 per year.
- Hayden told committee members that his office has lost deputies to Johnson County’s bigger cities, including Shawnee, as well as smaller ones, like Fairway.
County weighs in: County staff and commissioners largely seemed to agree that the staffing shortages should be addressed, but disagreed on what that should look like.
- In place of future retention or sign-on bonuses, Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, who is running for county commission chair in November, posed the possibility of bringing wages for deputies up from the initially proposed $26.50 to $28.50 hourly — which would make the minimum salary $59,280 annually.
- “It is obvious that there’s just such a differentiation between our pay grade and those of other departments,” she said. “It’s years of underfunding that has brought us to this point. We need to take action and we need to take action quickly.”
- Commissioner Janeé Hanzlick said while staffing shortages are a definite problem right now, she had concerns about impacting the county budget in a long-term way for what could be a short-term problem.
- “I hesitate to tie future commissions and future budgets to a reaction to a situation right now,” she said. “Maybe if this continues, we might want to make changes in the future to the pay table. But to make a permanent solution to what might not be a long-term problem, I think, would be short-sighted.”
What happens next with Sheriff’s Office pay
By a vote of 4-2, the board ultimately approved the motion to recommend the deputy pay bump, with O’Hara and Commissioner Michael Ashcraft voting against it.
- That means the plan will be brought before the Board of County Commissioners at the board’s next business meeting, where it will be up for official approval.
- The board will next meet at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 22.
