Mass. sheriffs point to labor, medical, phone call expenses amid budget scrutiny

As state lawmakers threaten to withhold funds from county sheriffs and investigate their spending, sheriffs across Massachusetts say their budget overruns were due to operational costs: pay increases for union employees, medical treatments for prisoners, free phone calls and repairs to aging infrastructure.

Spending among the 14 sheriffs burst into public view last week when lawmakers said they planned to withhold the money in the wake of public scandals in the Suffolk and Norfolk sheriffs’ offices. The sheriffs need an estimated $121 million extra, or 16.5% more than they were budgeted, to close their books on fiscal year 2025.

At the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office, superintendent and finance chief Jason Rives said labor costs account for roughly $50 million of his office’s $59 million budget, and a recent cost-of-living increase for union members has added millions to overall expenses.

“Labor costs are inherently increasing at a pace that is larger than our budget is being increased by,” he told WBUR in an interview.

Worcester spent $11.2 million more than the $59 million it was allotted in the fiscal year that ended in June. It was the fifth-largest deficit among the 14 sheriffs. Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis said his department is not overspending, but rather is underfunded.

“Everyone in the legislature knows they're not giving us appropriate funding. It's kind of a game we play. They give us a smaller allocation. We come back for supplemental spending,” Evangelidis said.

But lawmakers balked at this year's sum — estimated at $121 million across the 14 departments — calling it a “dramatic” increase compared to $46 million for the previous fiscal year.

House budget chief and Rep. Aaron Michlewitz said lawmakers have “always” had to cover overspending by sheriffs.”

Michlewitz said sheriffs had warned that a new program to make phone calls free for inmates was going to raise expenses. But at $12 million, he said, that’s just a fraction of the total over-budget spending.

The move to hold back the additional cash came after Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins faced accusations that he extorted a cannabis company in Boston, and Norfolk County Sheriff Patrick McDermott paid thousands to settle allegations that he misused campaign funds.

Healey and the legislature originally allocated just over $737 million to the sheriffs in fiscal 2025. Sheriffs in Hampden and Suffolk Counties had the largest budgets last fiscal year and also the biggest overruns, the data showed.

Lawmakers set aside $102 million for the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department in 2025, but the office spent nearly $27 million more than that. The deficit was the largest among all sheriffs in Massachusetts, a WBUR analysis found.

Officials in Hampden County said their cost overrun was a result of operating regional facilities without enough funding from the state, as well as providing state-mandated programs like medically assisted addiction treatment or no-cost calls, and absorbing rising operational costs.

The department’s CFO, Chris Gelonese, also pointed to an 8% cost-of-living adjustment for union staff, plus the impact of no-cost phone calls and the loss of commissions on commissary products — items from snacks to toothbrushes that prisoners purchase at the jail.

“In our line of work, there's contractual obligations and security obligations to start and end shifts with a certain amount of people. We’re 24/7,” Gelonese said in an interview.

The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, the largest in the state, was allotted $130.5 million for 2025, and spent $24.4 million more, state data shows.

Department spokesman Peter Van Delft said Suffolk, with hundreds of prisoners, saw a $2.2 million expense for no-cost phone calls and received only $1.5 million of the $5.5 million needed for its medically assisted drug treatment program.

He said the office also spent $2.6 million for service and repair work on “critically necessary facility structural projects.”

Suffolk is also committing nearly $3 million from its budget to run “specialized behavioral health units” in partnership with Boston Medical Center, Van Delft said.

“The department pays these costs, among many others, from a vastly underfunded budget each year, which is then made whole at the end of the year through supplemental appropriations,” Van Delft said in a statement to WBUR.

Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald’s office had the third-highest budget deficit. The office had a $72.5 million budget and an $18.1 million cost overrun in fiscal 2025, according to the state data.

Similar to other sheriffs’ offices, a spokesperson for McDonald said payroll was the “most significant expense,” while the bill for no-cost calls jumped by nearly $445,000 between fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

“We are not exempt from the rapidly increasing costs for utilities, fuel, food, medications and facility maintenance,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

In Bristol County, the sheriff’s department received $61.4 million and spent $11.6 million beyond that. An aide to Sheriff Paul Heroux said lawmakers are provided with complete spending projections every year, and still allocate lower amounts.

In an Oct. 14 email to Sen. Kelly Dooner, a Taunton Republican, Bristol County Sheriff’s Department CFO Tracey Rodriguez said the office has been “significantly short-funded for our existing medical contracts” despite those agreements being approved by Beacon Hill budget-writers.

“This funding gap was also communicated at the outset of both FY25 and FY26. For FY26 alone, we are currently underfunded by approximately $1.5 million,” Rodriguez wrote in the email, a copy of which was reviewed by WBUR.

In Worcester, Rives, the department’s CFO, said outside of labor, medical services are one of the department’s largest expenses. The Worcester County Sheriff’s Office spends roughly $6 million on medical staff, outside hospital care, dentists, and optometry, among other things, Rives said.

Evangelidis, the county sheriff, said mental health care has also “become a significant cost.”

“The legislature is encouraging us to assist those people in our care, custody and control, and have their reentry be successful. And you can't do that without addressing mental health,” he said. That often requires individual assessments and programming, he said. The office has 14 clinicians on staff.