Failure to fill spots worsened jail staffing crisis

Cpl. Louis Reyna checks on inmates Thursday Jan. 24, 2013 at the Bexar County Jail. Cpl. Louis Reyna checks on inmates Thursday Jan. 24, 2013 at the Bexar County Jail. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas, San Antonio Express-News Photo: Edward A. Ornelas, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Failure to fill spots worsened jail staffing crisis 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

The Bexar County Jail's staffing crisis has been exacerbated by chronic absenteeism among a handful of jailers that was mishandled by former Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz, forcing more deputies to work extra shifts and causing a huge increase in overtime costs.

Over a three-year period, just 2.7 percent of the jailers accounted for 12 percent of the department's 861,842 hours of absenteeism — or more than 21,500, 40-hour weeks — a San Antonio Express-News analysis of jail records shows.

The newspaper found much of the absenteeism was recorded by jailers who serve in the military reserves or the National Guard and were activated for extended tours of duty. Among the 30 most-absent jailers, at least 24 were reservists who were put on extended duty.

To compensate for their absence, the Sheriff's Office could “double-fill” their positions — permanently hiring a jailer to fill the vacancy left by a long-term military deployment. Under the program, when the deployed jailer returned from duty, the sheriff would transfer his or her substitute to fill another open position at the jail.

But the jail filled only 12 of the positions left empty by extended duty, leaving the other 12 vacant, according to jail records. And those 12 positions racked up at more than 28,000 hours of absenteeism that the newspaper's analysis concluded likely was connected to the military deployments.

Why Ortiz didn't fill all of the open spots to reduce overtime is unclear. After repeated attempts to reach Ortiz, a reporter recently visited his home, where his wife said he would not comment.

What is clear is the effect on his budget and staff. The jail is a 24/7 operation, and those open shifts had to be covered. When added up, all of those hours for the 12 spots is equal to at least 18 percent of the overtime costs.

The Sheriff's Office burned through $3 million in overtime in a little over two years, through last September. Then it piled on an additional $1.2 million in the fall, exploding its budgeted amount of $250,000.

The burden fell hard on some jailers.

Frequent overtime shifts forced Crystal Flynn, 38, to quit her job after eight years as a jailer because of the unpredictable schedule. The 16-hour days gave her little time to be with her two children, one of whom has special needs. She now works as a secretary at the deputies union.

“Having to tell them that I didn't know if I'm coming home, that was the most devastating to them,” she said, adding that they would feel abandoned and betrayed. “Especially when it's unpredictable, it's just not something they can comprehend.”

The findings give new ammunition to longtime critics of the jail who have argued that the staffing issue and mandatory overtime are a result of poor management, not budget cuts.

“There is a serious lack of management there,” said County Commissioner Kevin Wolff, who long has been one of the jail's most vocal critics. He described the Express-News' findings as one data point among many illustrating dysfunction at the facility.

The scope of the staffing crisis was one of the first issues confronting new Sheriff Susan Pamerleau after she took office Jan. 1. Soon after, last fall's surge in overtime costs was revealed.

Pamerleau acknowledged the paper's findings and indicated poor management had contributed to the staffing shortfalls, a problem she pledged to fix.

“When one position is unfilled, we have less capability to do the job that we need,” Pamerleau said. “All of those things ... are in the past. I'm the sheriff now, and we're going to fix that.”

However, she acknowledged that mandatory overtime shifts would continue until staffing levels return to normal.

The double-fills

The newspaper reviewed jail records from October 2009 through September 2012 and found just 30 of the 1,118 jailers who cycled through and were absent for any reason — ranging from sick leave, to holidays, to vacation, to unpaid administrative leave — accounted for 103,233 of the 861,842 hours taken off.

Over the same period, 867 jailers claimed 157,058 hours of overtime, including the OT required for the 12 unfilled positions caused by deployments.

While sheriff's records show 24 jailers were put on extended military leave, the records appear to be incomplete, indicating other military members may have been deployed and not properly tracked by the jail.

For instance, the jail's military leave database shows one jailer was activated for military duty three times over the three years, none for longer than a few weeks. But its separate absenteeism database shows the jailer was absent for almost an entire year. So where was the jailer for most of that year? On a deployment to Iraq, said the jailer, who wasn't cleared to speak with a reporter and asked not to be identified.

The position, nevertheless, was one of the dozen that was double-filled.

The Express-News found two other jailers who were not included in the list of extended military leave, though the pattern of their absenteeism matched those of other deployed jailers.

Those two jailers were absent for more than 4,700 hours, or 117 40-hour weeks. Their positions were not double-filled.

At the same time, the jail was blaming mandatory overtime on budget cuts, not absenteeism. In April 2010, the Sheriff's Office told the jailers union, the Deputy Sheriff's Association of Bexar County, that the staffing shortage had forced its hand.

“The current jail administrator explained to us that we would not fall out of jail standards compliance. ... We had to staff these positions, so that's why we had to do (mandatory overtime),” union president Joel Janssen said.

He said he believes the jail's failure to “double-fill” positions affected by military service worsened the staffing shortage.

“We're not filling those spots, and therefore, we're causing officers to work more mandatory overtime,” he said, pointing out that the stress of overtime forced jailers like Flynn to quit, further adding to the staffing crisis.

Pamerleau, who has been on the job less than a month, acknowledged that the department's inability to fill those positions worsened the staffing crisis, and she said the failure was part of a larger problem at the jail: Even though the jail is authorized to have 830 jailers, it currently employs 789.

She said eight jailers who serve in the military reserves or National Guard have been put on extended tours of duty, qualifying their positions for the double-fill program, though the jail has filled just two of those spots. She said the other six positions would be the last to be filled.

“There are a number of things we're already doing to address the issue of making sure that every authorization we have is filled so we can best do the job,” Pamerleau said, pointing out steps the Sheriff's Office has taken over the past few months to address the problem:

A class of 21 cadets is expected to graduate soon.

A second cadet class is expected to begin training shortly after the first graduates.

The Sheriff's Office has begun an effort to hire former deputies to work as jailers.

The jail has been given the authorization to increase the number of part-time jailers from five to 30.

Sparring boils over

The staffing crisis has been a point of contention for several years between county commissioners and the Sheriff's Office.

As tax revenues declined after the financial collapse in 2008, commissioners started to cut spending. And the jail, the county's largest expenditure, became an attractive target.

Budget writers got help from an unexpected source: the jail itself.

Over the past several years, the county began to launch and expand a series of programs designed to divert nonviolent offenders from the criminal justice system — such as the veterans court, drug courts and treatment programs — in an attempt to get a handle on the jail's spiraling costs.

The falling crime rate and diversion programs have driven a 14 percent decline in the jail's inmate population in three years, from a high of 4,259, to 3,676 last year.

The reduction, combined with budget pressure, led the Commissioners Court to cut the jail's budget from $56 million to $53 million for the 2012 fiscal year, with 100 jailers' positions to be cut through attrition. Commissioners later restored $2 million of the cuts.

But the Sheriff's Office and the union argued that commissioners were making cuts without understanding how they would affect the jail's operation.

“This isn't my plan that we're operating under,” Ortiz told the Express-News in September. “Keep in mind that (County Manager) David Smith came up with this plan that they would cut 100 officers, they would reduce the capacity of the jail to 4,200; so this is his plan.”

The sparring between the county and the Sheriff's Office provided an ample source of material for Ortiz's political rivals as he ran for re-election last year.

Pamerleau pounded Ortiz with ads during the closing months of the campaign, attacking his management of the jail, accusing him of endangering public safety and blaming him for the deaths of three police dogs, two of which died during the campaign.

She won the election by 4 percentage points and has pledged to improve the relationship between her department and the county.

nhicks@express-news.net