The Fulton County Board of Commissioners will fund quarterly $1.8 million in overtime funding for sheriff’s office staff providing detention services at the Fulton County Jail, but with strings attached.
A one-time $1 million fund to assist in recruiting and retention of detention officers was also approved in the resolution passed during the commissioners’ May 7 meeting.
As part of the conditions, Sheriff Pat Labat’s office must provide a complete roster of his employees with job titles and indicate whether an employee’s full-time role is for detention services in Fulton County jail facilities. The overtime payments will be reviewed quarterly, and the overtime funding ends at the end of the year, according to the resolution approved by the commissioners.
“So, given the hiring and the retention stuff, the issues that we have seen and the operational and supervisory issues that we’ve seen within the DOJ investigative report, and that we’ve read about on our own, we realize that some stop-gap measures do now need to be applied,” Fulton Commission Vice Chair Bob Ellis said.
The commissioner and the sheriff agreed to enter a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice in January to resolve problems at jail facilities. The consent decree came after a 97-page report from U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Ryan K. Buchanan was released on Nov. 14, 2024. The report said poor conditions at the Fulton County Jail violate incarcerated persons’ constitutional and statutory rights and have led to injury and death.
Commissioner Dana Barrett said she didn’t agree with a lot of the language and unnecessary commentary in the resolution. She asked for a copy of the revised resolution, as many changes were made to the original.
Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. also disagreed with what he called unnecessary commentary in the resolution.
“I think we’re digging a hole for ourselves. We’re trying to point the finger at someone else, and I think we wind up digging a hole for ourselves, because even if we point the finger at the other person, we still have to write the check,” Arrington said.
Labat sent out a response to the resolution disagreeing with its wording.
“This resolution reeks of dog whistle politics, is utterly tone-deaf to the realities our team members face every day, and intentionally and falsely mischaracterizes the budget and operations of the agency,” Labat said. “While we share the BOC’s concern for staffing and safety in the jail, effective solutions require honest assessments, not misleading figures and oversimplified narratives.”
Labat said claims that the sheriff’s office received a 52.5 percent increase in annual funding from 2021 to 2024 is inaccurate. He said the operating budget increased by 15 percent, reflecting countywide raises and inflation. Most of what was labeled as an increase was caused by moving the inmate health care expenses fund into his office’s budget in 2021. Before that year, those multimillion-dollar expenditures were in an account outside of his agency’s budget.
Labat also questioned why the commission funds the Fulton County Police Department, which has no statutory obligations.
The resolution passed 6-0, with Arrington abstaining. Commission Chair Robb Pitts was absent from the meeting.