During the June 20 work session on La Paz County Sheriff’s Office salaries, discussions took place between Sheriff Will Ponce and county superintendents, especially District 2 Superintendent Deuce Minor. Ponce said his department is losing employees to other agencies that can pay more, but Minor said the county doesn’t have the funds to do what Ponce wants. said.

“We had a lot of discussions today and I’m not sure if anything was resolved,” Minor said.

The work session took place at a supervisors meeting on June 6, after several sheriff employees spoke about low wages at the job posting.

The June 20 work session also included a discussion of how the county jail has become a major waste of county finances.

Ponce started by noting that other law enforcement agencies pay their employees $4 to $5 more per hour than the La Paz County SO. He said his employees are not receiving gradual pay increases or cost of living adjustments.

Minors responded that the county did not have funds for a gradual pay increase. He said all county departments face the same situation as the sheriff’s office.

“There is a finite amount of money in the county,” he said. “We have to be fair across the board. We have to create a budget within which we can live.”

Minor added that the current situation is the result of years of poor financial management by the county.

Miner said he hopes the state legislature will pass a proposal to send $53 million in state funding to county sheriffs. He said some of this money could be used to increase the salaries of accredited lawmakers.

Prison warden Rico Saffle told the board that the sheriff’s office has been saying for years that federal inmates could be pulled out of prison, and that this is the prison district’s primary source of income. Told.

In response to Arizona’s illegal immigration law, SB 1070, the Barack Obama administration pulled federal inmates from county jails. Since then, several federal inmates have been held at the La Paz County Jail, but they generally have not returned.

Saffle said he could get by with 30 federal inmates.

“The prison was overbuilt to begin with,” Ponce said. “We’ve got to figure out how to keep it going.”

Suffle pointed out that the sheriff’s office handles the extradition costs, and that transportation costs a lot. We also have to take care of transportation costs related to mental health.

Ponce and Saffle said they were frustrated because the department had already cut a lot of costs.

“We’ve already done a lot,” said Suffle. “The sheriff cannot do more.”

“There aren’t many options,” Minor replied. “Money has to come from somewhere.”

County administrator Megan Spielman said she hears all the time that “something has to be done about the prison district.”

District 1 supervisor David Plunkett said the county’s tax revenue needs to be discussed with the legislature. He said he wanted to see something for the prison district.

“Town funding mechanisms are very different from counties,” he said. “We can’t just raise taxes.”

Minor said he would prefer a sales tax increase over a property tax increase, given the limited amount of taxable private property in the county.

“We’re not the only ones the county is suffering from,” he said.

Spielman and consultant Karen Ziegler said states would want to know how they tried to raise revenue or cut costs before considering raising the sales tax.

District 3 Supervisor Holly Irwin noted that the county is currently recruiting an animal control officer. She said it could be placed under the sheriff’s office and a certified officer could be hired.

Minor said the sheriff’s office had been “top heavy” for years with too many staff at the top. He said it could be distributed among the lieutenants.

Irwin said he wanted to know how much it would cost to train deputies, detainees and dispatchers so he could know what the county was missing when these people left.

Ponce said he had discussed with Spielman ways to increase his income, including billing various agencies that use Central Dispatch.

Minor said this was all part of getting the county’s finances in order after years of mismanagement.

“It’s going to be painful,” he said. “It won’t heal in a year.”

The La Paz County Sheriff’s Office and Prison District formally presented its budget request for fiscal year 2022-23 at a budget work session on Tuesday, June 28.