Two months after hitting up the Clayton County Commission for $14.8 million in emergency funds to pay salaries and overtime, Sheriff Levon Allen was back before the body again on Tuesday to ask for more.
Allen asked commissioners for another $1.6 million to carry the office through the end of the fiscal year, June 30.
The issue: in addition to lacking enough money to make payroll, Allen said he needed more than $700,000 to pay deputies who won recent civil service complaints against former Sheriff Victor Hill for terminating them.
“One sum was upward of $400,000 that we had to backpay an employee and another one was upward of $300,000 that we had to backpay an employee,” he said. “Those came out of my current year’s budget.”
Allen’s ask, which the board unanimously approved, comes as management of the sheriff’s office has become a central issue in the debate over whether he should keep his job.
The sheriff has been criticized by opponents and Clayton residents for repeatedly coming back to the commission in the last year or so for funds to keep the department and Clayton County jail operational.
In May 2023, Allen received $3.6 million from the county to hire 33 additional deputies. In September, he sought another $6.5 million for a temporary modular jail to address overcrowding.
A month later, he requested but was denied $14.6 million for additional sheriff’s office staffing, the enclosing of the jail’s intake area and getting new equipment, such as tasers and body cameras.
In April, he requested and was allocated in a 3-1 vote $14.8 million after the sheriff’s office argued it had just enough funding to pay a month of salaries before it would run out of money.
Commissioner DeMont Davis, who voted against the $14.8 million request in April, questioned why the office was running out of money so soon after a hefty cash infusion and what was being done to make sure this doesn’t become a routine problem.
“I’m having a very rough time grasping this, considering the $14.8 (million), now the $1.6 (million),” he said. “These are things we all have to begin to think about. If not, our taxpayers and homeowners are going to take a big hit when it comes to the next tax year because the millage rate has to increase to begin to handle this.”
He added, “We’ve gone through this twice basically in the last 60 days. I think we deserve an answer to some of this so that we do not begin to go further in this quicksand, which I feel we’re getting into.”
Allen blamed the shortfall on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on part-time staff to fill in for a shortage of correctional officers compared to years past. Earlier this year he told the commission the sheriff’s office used to have funding for as many as 165 correctional officers. That number is down to 123, he said.
He added that of the $1.6 million he requested Tuesday, about $440,000 was for prisoner transport over the last six months. The remaining funds would cover increased medical and food costs and overtime for sheriff’s staff.
Commission Chairman Jeff Turner, who is running against Allen for sheriff and is in a runoff with him for the job later this month, appeared to tread lightly to avoid using the issue to one up his opponent. But he seemed to channel the board when asking if Tuesday would be the last time Allen would be before the commission before the end of the fiscal year.
“Is this going to be enough? he said. “Is this what is going to make it to July 1?”
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