The budget feud continues between Summit County Sheriff Jamie Fitzsimons and his own county.
FitzSimons two weeks ago cut 13 positions, many of them tied to social programs that are not required by law. That leaves his office with patrol deputies and jail staff “to keep the peace and operate a county jail,” he says.
In a public statement, and again with Krystal 93, FitzSimons blames these cuts on a months-long budget feud with county commissioners, saying he presented a flat budget, as requested, and then was asked to trim another $2.7 million. After that, his office ate another $1.3 million from increased health insurance costs. Every other county office was forced to do the same, but as the largest office, its increased costs were higher, and the fallout is broader. In one year, the sheriff lost roughly a quarter of his budget, he says.
Summit County Commissioner Nina Waters sympathizes with the sheriff, but especially with the employees who lost their jobs.
“It’s an incredibly painful decision that I think the sheriff had to make,” Waters says. “I don’t love the fact that he had to make those decisions the way that he did, letting people go two days before Christmas.”
Less help, more problems
Taking the biggest hit were social programs. Both community service officers were laid off. They were brought on board to manage parking and other neighborhood complaints during the COVID pandemic.
The mental health co-responder team drops from 24/7 coverage to 80 hours per week. That team, known as the SMART team, has won national acclaim since debuting in 2019. In 2021 the SMART team expanded with the help of several grants. It even won backing from an insurance provider.
Another experimental yet successful program, pretrial services, has disappeared completely. Up to 80 people per month “didn’t lose their job or their apartment or their partner,” the sheriff says, because this program kept them out of jail for minor traffic and drug offenses.
“The program saved taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars by reducing jail stays,” FitzSimons says of pretrial. “People that were historically stuck in jail before going to trial were released. This stabilizes these people, right? But we also provide them with services, whether it’s mental health or substance abuse, whatever they needed we provided (it to) them to be successful in the criminal justice system.”
Without this program, “these people will now go to jail,” the sheriff says.
Tough cuts countywide
The entire county enters the New Year with a hiring freeze, except for one public safety department that is separate from the sheriff’s office – the 911 dispatch center.
“We feel that those are essential positions and we want to make sure that those teams are fully staffed 24/7,” Waters says.
The county also hired a third assistant county manager. That position was one of the few still open when the county first imposed its hiring freeze last August.
Fitzsimons continues to blame commissioners. He believes they forced his hand.
But will these tough cuts and the lingering budget feud compromise public safety?
It depends on who you ask.
Says Waters, “I can’t say if Sumit County is more safe or less safe today, tomorrow or the next day. Crime is unpredictable in many ways. I can’t speak to that. I can speak to additional programs, like libraries, health and human services, roads and good infrastructure, those also make communities safe, and we are trying to spread our resources as wide as we can.”
Says the sheriff, “If we had a crystal ball we could staff and deploy accordingly. Will we see a collateral effect by eliminating positions? Absolutely. The stability in our community, in all facets, whether it be criminality, whether it be mental health, whether it be substance abuse, we are going to see a collateral effect by reducing these services.”