The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office is expected to end the fiscal year with a nearly $4.7 million deficit after overspending on jail operations, prompting county leaders to budget millions more while questioning how much staffing – and overtime – is needed as the jail population declines.
The El Paso County Commissioners Court in a unanimous vote Monday approved a nearly $143 million budget for the Sheriff’s Office – about 5% more than the current year – that will largely cover jail operations and pay raises previously approved under collective bargaining agreements.
The Commissioners Court did not authorize an increase to the sheriff’s overtime budget, but the county set aside about $9 million in a contingency fund for potential overtime costs. The court requested Ugarte provide justification for the use of overtime in the next fiscal year.
Overtime spending at the county jails has jumped nearly twice as much over the last two years since Sheriff Oscar Ugarte took office in January 2025, though the average daily jail population dropped about 10%. Ugarte is charged with overseeing the Downtown Detention Facility and the El Paso County Jail Annex on the Far Eastside.
LEARN MORE: The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office is spending more on jail overtime despite fewer inmates. It’s not clear if that’s justified
Commissioners Court on Monday questioned Patrick Gailey, chief deputy of the county’s detention bureau, about the increase in overtime spending and what would happen if overtime at the jails were to be cut.
“Our services that we are required to provide would become severely hampered,” Gailey said. Without providing specifics, he added that they’ve already cut the number of federal inmates they take in.
“There would probably be a lot of areas that would come under severe scrutiny by not only our internal personnel but the (jail) commission as well as to why we are not able to provide the service such as bringing in prisoners,” he said. “There’s a whole gamut of the unexplored that I think we’re going to run into problems with.”
Gailey also said the office told the Commissioners Court in April that about $6 million would likely be needed to cover overtime costs through the rest of the fiscal year.
The Commissioners Court on Monday also voted unanimously to reissue an April letter to the Sheriff’s Office requesting detailed information about overtime use be provided to commissioners regularly.
The letter also asks Ugarte to attend a future Commissioners Court meeting to address the issue as he has not directly addressed the entire court since April when a special meeting was held to discuss the overtime spending.
Ugarte told El Paso Matters he will attend a future meeting as requested.
He said he meets regularly with individual members of the court regarding budget and operations but it’s typically chiefs or commanders who attend the meetings when discussions related to operations they oversee are on the agenda.
Citing a needs assessment conducted by his department when he took office, Ugarte maintains the overtime is needed to appropriately staff the jails to ensure inmate and officer safety. The county in April agreed to hire an outside firm to conduct its own staffing study for the Sheriff’s Office, including at the jails. About $1 million has been budgeted for the study, but a timeline has not been set.
Ugarte requested nearly 170 additional uniformed personnel for the current fiscal year at a cost of about $15 million a year, but the request was denied.
“Obviously, there are some disagreements on the staffing tables, but I’m willing to show anybody this is where the positions are being used. These are our needs, and that’s where we’re at right now,” Ugarte said in a phone interview with El Paso Matters on Monday.
In fiscal year 2024, the average daily jail population was about 2,760; in 2025, that dropped to 2,596. The jail population is now at about 2,460.
While the jails are meeting state standards of one jailer to every 48 inmates, Ugarte said other operations such as prisoner and medical transport require more than one jailer at a time. He said overtime is often needed to cover staffing shortages created when detention officers are on military, sick or family medical leave.
The county has had a hiring freeze on new positions the past two fiscal years. The Sheriff’s Office has about 1,031 employees, including 200 deputies and 515 detention officers.
Commissioners Court in June approved a strategy that was to allow the Sheriff’s Office to temporarily fill additional jail staffing positions using savings from other vacancies, which officials said would help reduce costly overtime caused in part by detention officers attending six-month peace officer academies.
SEE ALSO: New county jail staffing plan could fill 40 positions a year, reduce overtime
As an example, Gailey said the department has five detention officers on military leave.
Still, Gailey on Monday told commissioners that the Sheriff’s Office is having difficulty recruiting quality, qualified candidates, adding that the department now has 25 detention officer vacancies. The upcoming detention officer training has nine qualified applicants for a class of up to 25, he said.
Ugarte said until he is able to hire more detention officers, overtime will continue to be used.
“I’m not gonna run a skeleton crew and have unsafe operations,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Office budget approved Monday includes about $40 million for the Downtown jail, a 1% increase over the current budget. The jail annex budget totals about $51 million, a 5% increase over the current budget.
“We’re gonna try to stay within (the approved) budget (for the new fiscal year). That’s my goal – it’s never my goal to go over budget,” Ugarte said.
The Sheriff’s Office budget is part of the larger $541 million general fund budget for day-to-day services adopted by Commissioners Court on Monday for the next fiscal year. The general fund budget represents a $45 million increase in spending driven largely by public safety and the spike in overtime pay at the jails.
The county budget for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, also includes pay raises for non-uniform county staff, judicial salaries and programs such as economic development and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension.
Non-uniform employees will receive a 3.25% cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, and step pay raises, and AgriLife employees will receive a 4% COLA. The cost to the county will be about $7 million with about $1.7 million coming from the reserve fund.
County employees who are not under collective bargaining agreements had not received pay raises over the last two years.
The county judge and county commissioners will not get a pay raise next fiscal year. They have not received pay raises since
To help fund the budget, the Commissioners Court in August adopted the no-new-revenue tax rate that will increase taxes on the average-value $229,637 home about $41 a year. That will bring the county’s portion of a tax bill to about $1,036 this tax year.
The post El Paso County adds millions to sheriff budget as jail overtime concerns persist appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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