DeKalb County's sheriff will get back 71 positions that had been cut just a month ago to save money.
While other law enforcement agencies in the county have also asked the Board of Commissioners to restore positions that were cut in the next budget, commission members said that, so far, only Sheriff Thomas Brown had answered their questions.
In July, the commission eliminated 644 positions -- all of them unfilled -- and that prompted some agencies to ask the board to rethink the decision.
Brown said his budget "would have imploded" if the commissioners had not restored the funds.
The sheriff said his department was already $1 million in the red for personnel expenses primarily because of the overtime to adequately staff the jail.
The restored jobs will cost $629,000 for the rest of this year and $2.2 million for the next fiscal year, which starts Jan. 1, the sheriff said.
Brown said 38 to 45 of the restored jobs are detention officers at the jail, which holds about 3,300 inmates. Fourteen will be deputies. About 20 will be other jail staff who don't have direct contact with inmates but are put in jobs such as running the controls that open and close doors. The agency has 750 employees.
Still some commissioners expressed concern about Brown's staffing.
“He, for whatever reason, seems to be unable to fill those jobs,” Commissioner Stan Watson said.
“They can’t fill those positions,” Commissioner Kathie Gannon said after the unanimous vote Tuesday. “They are overdrawing their overtime, so why have them [the vacant positions] on the books?”
Gannon is correct, Brown said. "They always underfund overtime. ... Every year they reduce my overtime budget," the sheriff said.
The commission put off requests from other agencies that also wanted positions restored.
Watson said the cuts were a tool for getting agency heads to justify the jobs. He said the risk was service could fall, but that would let the board know higher staffing was needed. If the quality of service did not change, Watson said, that would suggest that those agencies had too many funded positions.
“That was to compel that discussion and to have more in-depth discussions,” Watson said. “We want to be responsible, but we want the agencies to be responsive.”
The commission put off for two weeks requests to restore positions with the county Police Department, Animal Control and E911.
"Public safety is more than making sure you have enough line officers," Brown said.
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