At what was virtually the twelfth hour, San Bernardino County officials today initiated the first public step toward placing a proposal to steeply increase the pay of the sheriff, the district attorney, the county clerk/county assessor/county recorder and the county treasurer/auditor/controller/tax collector before the voters on November 5.
At 4:59 p.m. today, Friday July 26, the county sent out notice of a special meeting called for Tuesday, July 30.
Two items are contained on agenda, one of which pertains to a $20,701,203 contract with Newtown Square, Pennsylvania-based SAP Public Services, Inc. to provide so-called “cloud services,” i.e., retrievable data storage, to the county for the period of July 31, 2024 through September 8, 2029. Significantly, no staff report accompanies that item. It is believed, but no confirmation was provided by the county that the data storage arrangement is an outgrowth of the county’s efforts to recover from the hacking of the sheriff’s department’s computer system in the March/April 2023 timeframe and prevent any future recurrences. The county paid a ransom of $1.1 million to Russian mob figures last year to regain access to its lost data and restore the functionality of its computer system.
The presentation of the item without a less than in-depth explanation in the form of a staff report is highly irregular.
The second item to be considered is the consideration of a proposed ordinance relating to what is termed the Law Enforcement Staffing and Community Protection Act of 2024 and ordering that the proposal be submitted to the voters on the ballot for the November 5, 2024 election. That ballot measure will call for guaranteeing, as of January 1, 2025, that the auditor-controller/treasurer/tax collector and assessor-recorder-county clerk in office on November 5, 2024 will not have their base salaries reduced and each will receive base salary increases of 4 percent annually while they remain in office and serve any further terms, a pay grade commensurate with that of the average of the base salaries paid to officers holding the most similar position in Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties.
The measure is to further call for guaranteeing, as of January 1, 2025, that the pay and benefits of the county sheriff and district attorney will have their base salaries revised to the average of the salaries paid to the sheriff and district attorney in Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties.
Under the measure, the auditor-controller/treasurer/tax collector, assessor-recorder-county clerk, the sheriff and district attorney are to receive compensation and benefits pursuant to “the salaries and working conditions of the County-wide Elected Officials Ordinance,” meaning, apparently, benefits co-equal to those provided to county staff employees at the highest level.
In addition, the measure shall contain language, according to what is to be considered next Tuesday, that will require the board of supervisors to “allocate a minimum amount of funding in its annual budget to fund county patrol personnel’s direct salary and benefit costs for operations in the unincorporated area of the county. The minimum amount shall be the average of actual patrol personnel salary and benefits costs in the unincorporated area of the county in the three preceding fiscal years.”
The term patrol personnel refers to sheriff’s deputies.
The upshot of the measure in this regard appears to be that the county will be required to maintain law enforcement services in the county’s unincorporated area, which extends to roughly 94 percent of the entire county’s 20,105 square miles, without interruption or reduction.
An opportunity, however, to welsh on that commitment is contained in the language to be considered.
“The board may suspend this section for up to 12 months by a four-fifths (4/5) vote of the entire board which includes a declaration of a fiscal emergency,” the staff report states.
In addition, according to the staff report, “The sheriff shall publish an annual report detailing calls for service, deputy reports, and the prior two fiscal years budgets for patrol personnel salary and benefits. The report will be public and on the county’s website in December of each year.”
Throughout the county, telephone lines were immediately abuzz with county employees and governmental observers questioning and postulating as to what was ongoing. A few sophisticated old hands were able to provide direction for the collective to discern what is about to take place.
Essentially, the Sentinel was told, the rush to get the Law Enforcement Staffing and Community Protection Act of 2024 before voters in the November election is a ploy to increase Sheriff Shannon Dicus’s pension from the annual $310,660.07 he is currently on a trajectory to receive when he takes his anticipated retirement in January 2026 to $349,411.30.
According to those sources, the sheriff’s current salary before pay ad-ons, perquisites and benefits, in 2023 was $284,297.98.
His intention is to retire more than two years into his current term as sheriff, which will allow him to make a recommendation of his successor to the board of supervisors, which will then make that appointment in accordance with his wishes. That will allow his successor to run for sheriff as an incumbent, virtually assuring his election in 2026.
This will repeat the pattern that was established when Sheriff Gary Penrod took early retirement in 2009, designating his successor as Rod Hoops, whom the board of supervisors then appointed. Hoops was elected sheriff the following year. In 2012, Hoops retired and asked the board of supervisors to appoint John McMahon to replace him, which the board obliged. McMahon, using the strength of his status as the incumbent, was elected to serve as sheriff in 2014 and reelected sheriff in 2018. In 2021, he opted to retire, calling upon the board of supervisors to appoint Dicus as sheriff, which the board did. Under the current rules contained in San Bernardino County’s ordinances and charter as well as state law, if the sheriff resigns prior to the two-year or half-way point in his/her elected term, an election must be held to find a replacement. However, if the resignation takes place with less than half of the incumbent sheriff’s term remaining, an appointment by the board of supervisors to fill the vacant post can be made.
The formula for calculating the sheriff’s retirement in San Bernardino County under the arrangement with the San Bernardino County Employees Retirement System is that the retiring sheriff is to receive his highest salary as a public employee times the number of years employed as a public employee times 3 percent [.03]. Dicus, the son of a sheriff’s officer, after serving in the military was hired by the sheriff’s department in late 1991. He will thus have completed 33 years as an employee with San Bernardino County later this year and will reach 33.33334 years with the county by the end of April 2025, at which point he will be eligible to retire with 100 percent of his highest annual salary.
At present, San Bernardino County pays its sheriff a salary that is the average of the sheriffs of Ventura, San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Kern counties.
In 2023, Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff earned a salary before pay ad-ons, perquisites and benefits of $331,270.33.
In 2023, San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez earned a salary before pay ad-ons, perquisites and benefits of $316,579.68.
In 2023, Orange County Sheriff Donald Barnes earned a salary before pay ad-ons, perquisites and benefits of $289,096.52.
In 2023, Riverside County Sheriff Johnny “Chad” Bianco earned a salary before pay ad-ons, perquisites and benefits of $285,952.68.
In 2023, Kern County Sheriff Don Youngblood earned a salary before pay ad-ons, perquisites and benefits of $183,209.00.
Thus, based on San Bernardino County’s current remuneration formula for the position of sheriff along with other adjustments, Dicus had an annual salary of $284,297.98 as sheriff in 2023.
Given the three 3 percent cost of living adjustments that he would be provided by January 2026, Dicus would be pulling down an annual salary of $310,660.07 or thereabouts at that point. If he were to retire then at 100 percent of his salary, his annual pension, which he would be eligible to receive for the rest of his life, would stand at $310,660.07.
By removing the Kern County sheriff’s salary – the $183,209 pay level to Youngblood last year – from the formula and substituting in the Los Angeles County sheriff’s salary in its place, the average of the five sheriffs’ salaries would increase, as Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna was paid $375,905 in 2023.
In this way, if the Law Enforcement Staffing and Community Protection Act of 2024 is approved by voters in November and Dicus remains as sheriff for one year past the January 2025 change to the sheriff’s pay formula, upon his retirement in January 2026, he would be eligible for an annual pension of $349,411.30.
According to Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Dawn Rowe, upping the sheriff’s pension is the least the grateful residents of San Bernardino County can do for Dicus, who, according to Rowe’s office, has dedicated the lion’s share of his adult life to serving the county and its residents and “deserves every penny of that. He’s a real prince, just a super guy.”
If the passage of the Law Enforcement Staffing and Community Protection Act of 2024 can be swung, it will leave the Dicus family’s future financial affairs in such a way as to allow the sheriff’s wife, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Chief Shelley Krusbe, to take early retirement shortly after her husband does. Krusbe in 2023 was paid a salary before pay add-ons and perquisites and benefits of $239,738.34 for her work as the sheriff’s department’s seventh highest-ranking member. By late 2026, Krusbe’s salary will have grown to $261,968.56. Krusbe began with the sheriff’s department as a reserve deputy at the Colorado River Station in 1997 and transitioned to full-time with the department in 1998. Thus, if she were to retire in late 2026, she would herself be eligible for an annual pension of $220,053.59 for her 28 years of dedicated service.
-Mark Gutglueck