Monterey County Sheriff’s Office is asking for over $8 million for vacancies and new positions

SALINAS, Calif. (KION) - In August 2023, the Monterey County Sheriff's Office reported 47 vacancies, including 25 sworn officers and 22 professional staff members.

At the time, 43 employees were also on industrial leave.

The Monterey County Sheriff's Office is one of many departments in the county asking for a budget increase.

The Sheriff's Office is asking for over $8 million for the fiscal year 2024 -2025 which will raise the overall amount for the department to over $161 million.

KION checked and right now the Sheriff's Office claims that there are 32 overall vacancies including 12 sworn officers.

There are 57 Sheriff’s Office employees out on industrial leave.

"There are a lot of issues in the sheriff's department that need to be looked at," Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said. "It needs to be one of those priorities."

One of those issues Church points out is the Hernandez settlement from 2015, which still impacts the operations of the Sheriff's Office.

"The current administration is trying to get us away from underneath, in terms of the monitoring and the costs that are involved to that, which takes up a certain percentage of the Sheriff's Department budget forced a lot of deputies to be moved from patrol and operations to corrections instead," said Church.

Now the Sheriff's Office is asking for new staff to expand the jail program division.

The positions include a Sheriff's sergeant, two deputy Sheriff corrections, a management analyst, an office assistant, and a patient financial service specialist.

The Sheriff's Office is the largest law enforcement agency in the county, often helping out smaller agencies like the King City Police Department during a mass shooting that left four people dead.

There is a high chance they will not receive the full amount of funding it's asking for.

"No department requests are 100% fulfilled. That's usually far less. This is though, this is sort of the the opening, the opening part of the foot race at this point. So all departments are putting out on the real necessities and some wish list, and that will all be weighed in the next couple of months," .

KION reached out to the Monterey County Sheriff's Office for comment and emailed Sheriff Tina Nieto herself, but so far, no comment.

The county may face a $40 million deficit in fiscal year 2026-2027.