Cumberland County may soon expand the hiring bonuses program at the Sheriff’s Office to help the agency fill 173 vacancies.
The county commissioners are scheduled to vote Tuesday night whether to appropriate $350,000 from which Sheriff Ennis Wright could pay the bonuses to new hires. Kirk deViere, chair of the county board, advanced the idea at the Jan. 9 commissioners meeting and the board’s American Rescue Plan Committee authorized the use of federal American Rescue Plan dollars to pay for it.
The commissioners at the Jan. 9 meeting unanimously supported the idea.
This would add to an existing bonus program that the Sheriff’s Office website says offers $2,500 bonuses for new hires.
“It is a critical need for the shortages that are there — for not only the safety of our employees, but for the safety of the people that are in the Detention Center as well,” deViere said at the Jan. 9 meeting.
“It’s a critical issue with our sheriff’s department and public safety as well,” he also said.
The Cumberland County Detention Center — the jail — has 96 vacancies out of 162 positions, deViere said. That leaves just 66 employees there.
The rest of the Sheriff’s Office has 77 vacancies among its sworn law enforcement officers, he said. This is out of 315 sworn officer positions, the Sheriff’s Office told CityView.
$350,000 pool for bonuses
To boost employment at the Sheriff’s Office, deViere said he would like to budget $350,000 from which the sheriff can give bonuses to newly hired people:
- 200,000 for bonuses to attract experienced law enforcement officers from other agencies. He called this “a lateral transfer bonus pool.”
- $150,000 to provide bonuses to persuade people to become detention officers at the county jail.
The money may be able to come from the county’s federal American Rescue Plan allocation, deViere said.
Childcare costs are also an issue for some employees, he said, and bonuses could help cover that.
The sheriff would set the criteria of how the program would work, deViere said. He described it as a short-term fix while the county works on ways to address long-term employment challenges, such as how to help employees obtain childcare.
Commissioner Glenn Adams suggested that money from lapsed salaries in the vacant positions could be used in addition to money from the American Rescue Plan. He also asked whether the salaries are high enough to keep employees from leaving.
Money to come from American Rescue Plan
If the commissioners approve the program on Tuesday, Cumberland County will use money from The American Rescue Plan to underwrite the Sheriff’s Office hiring bonuses. The American Rescue Plan is a Biden administration program that Congress passed in 2021 to help the country and the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession.
The American Rescue Plan sent more than $57 million to Cumberland County.
DeViere said he thinks the deputy hiring bonuses should qualify for the American Rescue Plan’s purpose of helping communities recover from the money. “I believe that this is tied to our growth of our employment — employee pool — post-COVID, and so it meets the criteria.
Cumberland County in 2021 had three people representing it in Congress: Republican U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, and Republican U.S. Richard Hudson. All three voted against the American Rescue Plan.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Budd, who is one of Cumberland County’s federal lawmakers today, was a U.S. House member representing the Piedmont region of North Carolina when the American Rescue Plan Act was before Congress. He also voted against it.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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