In final report on sheriff spending, IG warns it’s ‘time for the chaos to stop’

Inspector General Jeff Shapiro dropped his final report on county sheriffs’ spending Monday morning and it hit Beacon Hill with a thud, and blame to go around. 

The sheriffs’ budget process is “chaotic with chronic underfunding and illegal overspending,” Shapiro’s office said. Problems stem from a “lack of a common understanding of the role of the sheriffs’ offices,” with some legislators seeing their role as narrow and some of the elected sheriffs possessing a more expansive view.

“How we got to this point no longer matters. Sheriffs’ offices have been Commonwealth agencies for more than 25 years. It is time for the chaos to stop,” Shapiro said in a statement.

New Bedford’s Ash Street Jail should be closed, Shapiro said in his report. He also found that “The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office cannot provide for the safety and security of its staff and inmates at its Dartmouth facility,” because half of its cells don’t have locks. That’s because those cells don’t have toilets or running water.

Shapiro’s findings echo Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux’s longtime goals of closing the 138-year-old Ash Street Jail and renovating the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction, which The New Bedford Light reported on in 2024. 

Heroux has been seeking state funds for the upgrade, which would cost $20 million for a full renovation or $10 million for a reduced-scope renovation, according to the report. 

Heroux, in a press release Tuesday, said Shapiro’s report states “what I have been saying for over three years — we need to put locks on inmate cell doors to make the Dartmouth jail safer, and if we do that, I can close the Ash Street jail in New Bedford and save the state money.” 

‘Like the wild west’

Elsewhere in the report, Shapiro found that the state’s approach to funding sheriff’s offices has led to “uncontrolled spending with little to no oversight.” 

“To put it in sheriffs’ terms, it’s a bit like the wild west,” the report says.

It’s commonly understood “that the sheriffs’ General Appropriation is not sufficient and supplemental funding is all but guaranteed,” the report says. Sheriffs, lawmakers, and the state Executive Office of Administration & Finance don’t agree on “such foundational ideas as the role of the sheriff, what the state covers for mandated programs, how funds derived from civil process are to be handled.”

Responses to Shapiro’s preliminary report gave him optimism that all parties involved agree on the need for change, but “solving the budget issues and eliminating deficit spending is a multi-year effort,” he said.

Shapiro said civil process fees and expenditures operate outside state controls and laws governing civil process are “out of date and needlessly complex.” The Executive Office for Administration and Finance allows sheriffs “to transfer funds out of their payroll account to use for other expenses with the knowledge that such offices are operating at a deficit,” the report said, and the state comptroller “allows the sheriffs’ payroll to continually run into a deficit to meet state labor law without being brought into the positive before the next payroll run.”

In a letter with his report, Shapiro identified his “biggest concern” as the use of private bank accounts outside of the oversight of the state Treasury and comptroller. The report flags 120 accounts that together had more than $42 million of expenditures during fiscal 2025 and held balances of over $36 million at the close of that fiscal year, which ended with an “historic combined deficit of $110 million” for the state’s sheriffs.

Shapiro recommended that the state budget include separate line items to address different elements of sheriff spending, from operations to free calls for inmates to medication-assisted treatment and collective bargaining.

The Light contributed reporting.