The Pacific County Courthouse Annex is the venue for most meetings relating to county administration.

SOUTH BEND — It has been six months since the Pacific County Sheriff’s Office filed its first major budget supplement request to the Pacific County Commission. The requests have been ignored thus far.

Budget supplement requests are a slippery slope for public agencies and are not guaranteed to even be considered since they ask for money outside what is already budgeted. In the situation of the sheriff’s office, some of the funds have already been allotted.

The first of the requests came around May 15, when the agency asked the county to refund a position that the sheriff’s office opted to pull funds from to support a deputy position. The two sides met two days before, on May 13, to hash out the issue.

According to the 2024 budget, the sheriff’s office was given funding for 14 deputies and 4.5 administrative clerks. The half-time position proved to be an issue to fill because no one was interested in working part-time, subsequently adding additional work to another clerk.

The combination of workload and inexperience in the office reportedly created a ripple effect that had one clerk at risk of quitting. The issue allegedly came down to a misstep in a budget proposal from Chief Civil Deputy Hollie Billeci, and the position was meant to be full-time.

“This year, if that person hadn’t been departed, we wouldn’t be laying her off,” PCSO Chief Civil Deputy Hollie Billeci said at the May 13 workshop. “We would be doing a budget supplement to get this. We can’t afford a patrol deputy. We have to hire the other person. This just needs to be made right, is the bottom line.”

14th deputy

Billeci was referring to a proposal from Pacific County General Administrative Officer Paul Plakinger that the agency opt not to fill a vacant 14th deputy position. He suggested that the agency shift half the position’s funding to the clerk position. The sheriff’s office ultimately decided to do just that on June 13.

The county has not yet taken up the request. Other requests seeking more than $273,000 also remain outstanding. The requests are unique in that they ask for funds to be provided again, or as it’s been put, “double-dipped.”

In emails obtained between Garcia and county officials, he is shown becoming increasingly frustrated with a non-response from the officials. He was also concerned whether they were even receiving his messages and asked for confirmation.

“I am reaching out to you to formally request a response to our questions regarding our budget supplements,” Garcia stated. “We have been requesting these since May. 1. Why have these all been pushed to the very end of the year? … What date will these been (sic) processed?”

Budget explanation

Garcia and the county discussed the issue during a workshop on Dec. 18. Plakinger later spoke with the Observer to give a rundown of the hold-up and lack of action on the requests.

“The first one came in [at $159,169.83], and that was in July,” Plakinger said. “A second supplemental request in October for $98,781.34] came in, over a quarter-million dollars in those supplemental requests. $257,951.17 related to the Second Chance Reentry Grant for the jail.”

“Now that is revenue that came in for reimbursements, that we did not purposefully have the revenue accounted for in the budget as far as estimating what might come through in this calendar year. In the past, sometimes the reimbursement requests [were] late, and for me, if we can’t count on a quarter-million dollars coming in in revenue, and I am presenting a budget to the board that might be balanced based on revenue that might not materialize, I don’t feel that is a responsible approach,” Plakinger added.

In a nutshell, Plakinger and the county opted to budget the projected expenditures that the funding would cover with funding from the county’s General Fund. When it is received, the funding replenishes what the county forked over ahead of time.

“The revenue materialized because, thankfully, the sheriff’s office did submit the reimbursement requests in a timely manner, and the money came back, which was great,” Plakinger said. “But when the money came back, there was a request to re-add that money to the [sheriff’s office] expenditures.”

“Which, again, the money had already been accounted for in the expenditures budget. We had a little bit of a misunderstanding about that,” he added.

Billeci was not reachable for comment at the time of reporting.