Another cash-out in sheriff’s office

Published 6:58 pm Sunday, February 22, 2026

SOUTH BEND — An administrator at the Pacific County Sheriff’s Office has taken out another significant payout due to what is explained as accrued flextime. This is the third year in a row that at least one administrator has taken a large cash-out.

The cash-outs have been a point of contention between the sheriff’s office and Pacific County General Administration along with the Pacific County Commission due to limited documentation to back up the cash-outs.

In an email response to the Observer on June 10, 2024 — when the first round of cashouts occurred — PCSO Chief Civil Deputy Hollie Billeci explained how the documentation worked at the time.

“We don’t keep a timesheet, but I am on the schedule every weekday from [8 a.m. to 4 p.m.],” Billeci said. “If I deviate from that schedule by staying later or coming in earlier or taking time off, I submit comp time (flex time)/vacation/sick etc.”

The agency’s administrators are scheduled most weeks for 40 hours of work — on 9-hour shifts — and any hours past the nine hours start tallying toward flextime. The flextime is meant to be used for days off.

In essence, if an administrator works 50 hours one week, they could take an entire day off the next week and an hour of another day. However, in the case of the sheriff’s office, the administrators continuously accrue the hours.

“Chief [Randy] Wiegardt and I accumulate flex time and use that before we use our vacation/sick time; therefore, our vacation/sick time accrues most of the year,” Billeci said. “There is no way we could take both our vacation and flex time and still be effective in our position. As you know, we are extremely understaffed, and if we are out of the office any more than we currently are, balls would drop, and we are not willing to let that happen.

“We have always been able to pull a report of our time and all of our time off usage, which is a timesheet. There has always been a system of checks and balances and accounting. I have been trying to explain that from day one, but it doesn’t seem I am being very effective at that. For that, I apologize.”

What this means for the administrators is that they can accrue substantial flex time; in fact, enough to cover an entire vacation. Therefore, instead of having to tap into their vacation time for vacations, they can leave that time intact.

Flex time cannot be cashed out; it has to be used for actual time off. On the other hand, vacation time can be cashed out — which is precisely what is being done.

Wiegardt’s pay for January topped out at $18,641.63, which included a cashout of approximately $10,000 worth of vacation pay.

The Observer submitted a public records request on Jan. 12 for the agency’s administrator’s timesheets and received the records on Jan. 23. The timesheets are a copy of the administrators’ weekly schedules for 2025.