Top Democrats in the Massachusetts Senate offered a full-throated denial Thursday that county sheriffs gave them a heads-up on multi-million-dollar budget overruns.
The pushback comes as the Legislature presses forward with a multi-billion-dollar spending bill that requires the Inspector General’s Office to investigate sheriff’s departments’ spending and sets up an oversight council to monitor their finances.
Senate President Karen Spilka said sheriff’s departments “suddenly notified” the House, Senate, and Gov. Maura Healey’s office they had overspent their fiscal 2025 budget appropriations. Sheriffs overran their budgets by $121 million, Healey administration data shows.
“Just think, if all other agencies did the same, the state would be bankrupt. So that’s why, in working with the House, we decided to try to get a better handle on how the money was spent because we had no idea,” Spilka told reporters. “There was no notice as the year was progressing.”
House lawmakers last week approved a $2.2 billion spending bill to close the books on 2025 but withheld the cash sheriffs sought to pay off their budget deficits.
State senators were in the process of passing a similar bill Thursday that also included an oversight panel, a body that could offer one of the first statewide checks on sheriffs.
Sheriffs who have spoken to WBUR said they are in regular contact with lawmakers on Beacon Hill to provide projections on their spending.
Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux said he asked lawmakers for a roughly $72 million budget when they first crafted the spending plan for 2025. But Beacon Hill approved only $61 million, which his department blew past by $11 million, according to state data and Heroux.
“For anybody to suggest that the supplemental budget request is out of the blue is just very disingenuous. The exact same scenario has played out many, many times in the past,” he said.
Heroux said his department’s chief financial officer “has regular contact” with Healey’s budget writing office and the two budget-writing committees in the Legislature.
Officials at sheriff’s departments have said their overspending was due largely to pay increases for union employees, state-mandated medical treatments for prisoners, free phone calls for inmates, and repairs to aging facilities at houses of correction and jails.
Sen. Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat who runs his chamber’s budget-writing committee, said there is “a lot of spinning going on right around what the facts are and how notifications or communications happen.”
He said senate budget analysts talk to every agency and department in state government.
“Some agencies and departments choose to respond, and some choose not to respond,” Rodrigues said. “I’m saying that we were not aware until the governor filed her supplemental budget … the amount of deficit the sheriffs overspent in fiscal year 2025.”
Rodrigues said the yearly budget Beacon Hill approves each summer “is not a suggestion.”
“The law is that’s the budget that you have to live under. Now, do all agencies and departments,” he said. “Are they always capable of living within that budget? No. ”
