The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office recently overshot its personnel budget by an eye-popping $3.9 million, but it’s not because of extravagant new programs or expensive equipment. Instead, the overage is being blamed on a very familiar culprit – a lack of staff, combined with soaring overtime costs that’s been needed to fill in those gaps.

In a budget year that was supposed to be balanced, the Sheriff’s Office overrun stood out. Guilford County adopted its $847.3 million general fund budget for fiscal 2025 – 2026, but that balance came only after some significant internal budget maneuvering to balance the 2024-2025 budget – and a big part of that juggling act was caused by overtime pay in the Sheriff’s Office.

The shortfall wasn’t exactly a surprise. As anyone who regularly reads the Rhino Times knows, the Sheriff’s Office has been struggling to recruit and retain deputies and detention officers for years – and the problem has grown worse as other agencies in nearby cities and counties have raised starting pay and improved benefits.

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners have approved a great deal of perks for Sheriff’s Office jobs in recent years but that still hasn’t made those jobs attractive enough for those seeking employment in law enforcement.

As a result, Guilford County has fallen behind. And, when you can’t fill the positions, the work doesn’t go away – instead, that work just falls on fewer people, who get paid time-and-a-half to work extra hours.

Currently, a starting deputy in the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office makes about $43,000 a year. Nearby law enforcement agencies are beating that. Greensboro pays around $55,000 to start. Winston-Salem is in the same range. Even Alamance County starts higher. In Forsyth County, some new deputies are reportedly starting at around $62,000 – nearly $20,000 a year more than Guilford County.

That pay gap isn’t just a recruiting problem; it’s also a retention problem. And both are budget problems. As longtime deputies leave and new applicants look elsewhere, Guilford County is left trying to fill schedules with fewer deputies and detention officers.

The only way to do that is with overtime – and that’s what the county has been using.

It’s a costly workaround: Overtime wages are typically one-and-a-half times the regular rate, so covering a standard shift through overtime drives up personnel expenses fast. Multiply that by dozens of shifts across detention centers, patrol units, court services and other required staffing, and it’s easy to see how the numbers got out of hand.

So where did the money come from to cover the extra cost?

County budget staff were able to move money from various departments that had budgeted surpluses or underspending, usually due to unfilled positions. Money planned for Emergency Services, Behavioral Health, Animal Services, IT and a handful of other departments all helped pay for the overage.

The county commissioners, many of whom have acknowledged the pay discrepancy in public meetings, have said they expect to take a closer look at the Sheriff’s Office compensation structure. Some have called the current starting salaries “unacceptable” and have suggested Guilford County will need to raise pay across the board in order to solve the problem instead of just paying high overtime costs after the fact.

After the 2026 revaluation of all property in the county, if the board keeps the tax rate the same, there will be plenty of taxpayer money to fund everything the commissioners’ heart’s desire, including higher pay for law enforcement officers.

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