Sheriffs Win Second Funding Shot from Legislature

Taking an initial stab at reorganizing the fraught process of funding county sheriffs, House budget writers are proposing to proposing to funnel money to the 14 offices across four purpose-specific line items.

The $63.3 billion House Ways and Means fiscal 2027 budget proposal includes $812.1 million for the sheriffs' offices, representing an allocation of $52.6 million more than the fiscal 2026 budget. Gov. Maura Healey's fiscal 2027 budget proposed about $759.5 million for the sheriffs, up $21 million from roughly $738.4 million in projected spending this fiscal year.

The Ways and Means proposal would split the funding into four explicit categories: $88.1 million for operations, $660.6 million for payroll, $12.4 million for no-cost calls, and $13.5 million for medication-assisted treatment.

"What we're proposing now is certainly not what we believe to be the final version of this discussion, and in fact, this discussion may take, you know, multiple budgets to eventually sort out. But what we tried to do to get the ball rolling here is to create a better system," House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz told reporters at a Wednesday morning budget briefing.

County sheriffs presented the Legislature last year with a $110 million — initially thought to be around $160 million — end-of-year deficit to make up, which the Massachusetts Sheriffs Association said was associated with salary increases, programs that provide care for inmates with substance use disorder, and the statewide no-cost calls program. Some sheriffs have argued that they aren't overspending, but that they've been underfunded for years.

The inspector general released an initial report in February, writing that the budget process for the sheriffs "has become opaque, chaotic, and deeply flawed." It found that many sheriffs overspend their budgets annually, possibly in violation of state finance law, but that the fault lies both in appropriations and spending.

"It was workable when you were talking, you know, $10 to $20 million, maybe, on a closeout basis, but when you get up to the numbers of 150, 160 million — which is what we had last year — I think it's become unworkable, and we need to change the process," Michlewitz said. "So this is the first step, we're trying to change that process and get a little more detailed description of exactly how we're funding this."

After withholding sheriffs' funding in the fiscal 2025 closeout supplement spending bill, both the House and Senate have proposed in a surtax supplemental budget $54.4 million to chip away at deficiencies the offices incurred that year, which Michlewitz said would cover roughly half of the cost overruns. In allocating half the money for fiscal 2025, Michlewitz said, lawmakers also are requiring the sheriffs to give a more detailed account of how they've spent their money in fiscal 2025 and 2026, and how they expect to spend their money in fiscal 2027. He added that the information "will be helpful in letting us know exactly how we can further detail and further itemize the budgets and these accounts going forward."

Michlewitz said lawmakers are waiting on the inspector general's final report, which is expected in May.

"This may be something that may evolve between the House's budget to the Senate's budget to conference committee into July," the North End Democrat said. "We're putting our marker here for now, and feeling that this is an appropriate step to be taking, and also trying to get to a more appropriate number that is more sustainable long-term, as opposed to budgeting for the numbers on the back end of the fiscal year."

Michlewitz said that the budget also funds the Hampden County sheriff's Section 35 account and "some retained revenue accounts." According to his office, the Section 35 account is proposed at $14 million and the other accounts in various line items add up to approximately $11.5 million.

"We know that this is the beginning of a longer conversation that we're going to be having here with the sheriffs and with our counterparts in the Senate, even with the administration, but we feel that we cannot continue to be budgeting this as we have in the past, where we set up a certain rate, and then we have to come back and fix that rate at a much larger amount when we're doing the closeout deficiencies," Michlewitz said.

In a fiscal 2026 springtime supplemental budget filed Tuesday, Healey recommended $22.5 million to cover no-cost calls between incarcerated people and their families — $12.5 million for sheriffs and $10 million to cover the calls at the Department of Correction.

Ella Adams is a reporter for the State House News Service and State Affairs Massachusetts.