The New Hanover County school district’s $20 million budget hole has been well covered, including here on The Dive. But there’s been substantially less said about a comparable $18.4 million budget shortfall for the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office.

The county’s proposed $108-million public safety budget, over 75 percent of which goes to the sheriff’s office, compensates for that. It’s actually slightly higher than the $100.5 million public school budget for the first time in recent history. 

The sheriff’s office increase is driven largely by overtime pay for staff, in particular at the detention center, which has been dealing with staffing shortages. There are currently 35 open positions among a staff of roughly 600, and turnover has been high.

Two policy changes last fiscal year also increased overtime costs: raising overtime pay from 150 percent to 200, and compressing the overtime period from 28 to seven days. 

The change caught the county off guard. As Chief Financial Officer Eric Credle acknowledged during a budget meeting last week, “We missed that one, for sure.” 

So, for the upcoming year, the county has budgeted $11.4 million for overtime at the sheriff’s office. County officials hope that the overtime costs will level out in time, although they’ll still face challenges recruiting and retaining officers. 

This budget conversation took less than 10 minutes, without the weeks of turmoil that accompanied the school budget discussions. 

That’s in part because Sheriff Ed McMahon didn’t propose thinning his ranks to cover the gap, whereas Superintendent Charles Foust has suggested cutting hundreds of positions. And unlike the schools, which get around 57 percent of funding from the state, local law enforcement is primarily a county-budget line item–in other words, there’s nowhere else to look for funding. 

And historically, law enforcement budget requests get little pushback. The 2020 calls to “defund the police,” which never got much traction in New Hanover County even at their loudest, have since faded.

Still, there is an interesting sort of symmetry here.

Law enforcement and public education employees both routinely tell me they feel like a persecuted class: Broadly speaking, teachers feel attacked by the right, and detectives and deputies feel denigrated by the left. Both feel under-compensated for their expertise and experience and overburdened with multiple roles and excessive bureaucracy.

Teachers can’t just teach; they must now worry about social skills, emotional and behavioral regulation, and avoid allegations of indoctrination. One school board candidate has even suggested that teachers take up arms to help provide school security. 

Patrol officers are likewise asked to be mentors, community figures, drug counselors, and–perhaps most dangerously and frustratingly out of their lane–mental health workers. 

Add to that soaring inflation and housing costs which dampen any benefit that modest increases in compensation could bring. The situation is not sustainable if attrition and turnover rates are any indication. 

The plight of teachers has been well documented. There’s no shortage of political wrangling over funding for schools, and the public knows what the stakes are if they are left without quality teachers.

And while there’s ample coverage of law enforcement’s problems, from use of force to lack of transparency, there’s been far less conversation about what’s going on behind the scenes. That’s due in no small part to the fraught relationship between law enforcement, which often feels like it’s under attack by the press, and journalists, who see these agencies as opaque and defensive. Cops and reporters don’t trust each other, to put it mildly. 

But the erosion of morale, experience, and staff in law enforcement agencies is still an important story. We know what happens if you throw a first-year teacher, with minimal support, into a class of students dealing with mental health, learning, and language issues. What happens when we throw a rookie detective on a complex child sex abuse case or staff the jail with a small, overworked crew? 

Those are concerns that can’t be fixed with a budget increase alone.

–Benjamin Schachtman

Catch up on an audio conversation on last week’s edition of The Dive here, or contact us with story ideas and feedback at wilmington@theassemblync.com.

A Retrospective on Refugees

Word that New Hanover County Schools officials were considering a school for students new to the U.S. prompted outcry earlier this year.

So-called “newcomers schools” are rare. North Carolina has just two–one in Greensboro and another in High Point–that are designed to give refugees a year in a public school setting that offers additional services as they pursue asylum. 

Leaders of New Hanover County Schools have been considering opening their own for a few years, but when they reintroduced the concept in December, board members and the community responded with swift backlash.

There’s the aforementioned budget crunch, as well as the controversial proposed closure of the Career Readiness Academy at Mosley, which serves special needs students. The proposed closure was supposed to save the district money, so plans of creating a new newcomers school–one that many wrongly conflated with harboring “illegal immigrants”–raised alarms. After the tumult, officials said Mosley would remain open.

WHQR took a detailed look at the chain of events and did an exhaustive fact-checking of both what newcomer schools are and of immigration laws.

Listen in on the hour-long special edition of The Newsroom here. 

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Around the Region

Bermuda, Bahama: Novant Health has a practice of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore Caribbean accounts to avoid taxes, Port City Daily reports. Nonprofit hospitals have said the tax avoidance helps them maximize returns. 

Biz Park Boost: New Hanover County will invest $3.3 million for an incentive package to help add 10 new buildings to a business park on U.S. 421, Greater Wilmington Business Journal reports. The expansion could add 1,500 jobs and up to $400 million in taxable property. 

Defender Shortage: Greater Wilmington Business Journal profiled New Hanover County public defender Jennifer Harjo, who said her office is short-staffed and overworked.

Around the State

Lobbyist Seriously Injured at Legislative Leader’s Wedding Weekend

Destin Hall, who’s in line to become House speaker, was in a truck that briefly left the scene.

Why the State’s Deaf Schools Declined–and Could Rise Again

North Carolina long pushed deaf children toward mainstream schools. Now lawmakers want to give parents more choices.

How South of the Border Keeps Going After All These Years

South of the Border is not what it used to be, but people keep stopping.

The Assembly is a digital magazine covering power and place in North Carolina. Sent this by a friend? Subscribe to The Wilmington Dive or to our statewide newsletter.

Johanna F. Still is a health care reporter for The Assembly. She previously worked for the Greater Wilmington Business Journal, where she reported on economic development. She is also a photographer, and was the assistant editor of Port City Daily.