‘Wage war’: Sedgwick County hikes pay for sheriff’s officers after Wichita police raises

Sedgwick County boosted pay for sheriff’s office employees Wednesday in an escalating law enforcement wage war with the city of Wichita.

The county will transfer approximately $4.5 million from reserves to cover 8.7% increases for all sheriff’s employees, including Sheriff Jeff Easter, who presented the funding request to commissioners Wednesday. That’s on top of the 2% increase that went into effect at the beginning of the year.

The new raise comes a month after the Wichita City Council voted to give police employees 13.27% raises and one-time $5,000 bonuses.

“If people don’t believe that we’re going to lose people to Wichita, they’ve got their head in the sand, because they’ll go where the money is,” Commissioner David Dennis said before the unanimous commission vote.

With the Wichita Police Department increases, starting officer pay is now $29.75, compared to $23.97 at the beginning of 2024 for new sheriff’s deputies. The pay bumps approved Wednesday get the county’s starting pay to $26.02.

“It is threatening to see this wage war continue,” Commissioner Jim Howell said. “I don’t know how it’s going to stop. I have a concern that it’s just going to continue ping-ponging back and forth because as soon as we do this, they’ll use our increase as a rationale for another increase across the street.”

The Wichita police union is entering another round of negotiations with the city in 2024. Easter said he knows the Fraternal Order of Police is pushing to get the more than 13% raises they’ve already secured up to 20%.

The Wichita Police Department is hoping to hire new officers to fill roughly 100 budgeted vacancies on the force. Sheriff’s office staffing has actually improved over the last year. What was a 127-deputy shortage at the beginning of 2023 has been cut to 54, Easter said.

Only the 8.7% raises have been formally approved by the county, but the plan is to bring another request for an additional 2% department-wide pay raise in the third quarter of 2024, and Easter expressed hope that the commission will increase compensation by another 4.65% in 2025 and 2026.

Howell noted that in the past, the commission has always approved sheriff’s office pay raises after conducting a regional compensation analysis. No such analysis was conducted before the approval of Wednesday’ raises, which will go into effect immediately.

The $76 million sheriff’s office budget approved by Sedgwick County last year accounts for 41% of the property tax dollars the county collects.

County CFO Lindsay Poe Rousseau said approving the raises would have a sizable impact on this year’s budget forecast, which previously projected a slight general fund surplus by the end of 2024.

“With this action, we expect that that deficit based on that forecast would be around $3 million at year-end,” Rousseau said.

Howell said the county will have some “serious challenges to get this budget back on its feet” in 2024.

“When you have deficit spending for operations, that’s an alarm. And that’s exactly where we’re at right now.”

All Sedgwick County deputies spend at least some of their time staffing the Sedgwick County Jail, where Easter said they routinely work 12- to 16-hour shifts.

This story was originally published January 10, 2024 at 12:50 PM.