SOUTHWICK — Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi announced on March 25 the commonwealth was withholding $26 million in funding, which is forcing him to make significant cuts to the department’s budget, including eliminating water safety patrols on Congamond Lakes.
“It will be going away unless the town wants to contract with the Sheriff’s Department,” said Police Chief Rhett Bannish about the elimination of the patrols.
Despite losing the Sheriff’s Department patrols, Bannish said the department will continue its own.
“We’ll do what we have to do to keep our officers on the water,” he said.
On March 25, Cocchi announced a “potentially multi-phase” plan to reduce spending on public safety programs not currently funded by another municipality or organization, which will include reducing 50 of the department’s positions to save up to $4 million.
For the last two years, the sheriff deputies have patrolled the three Great Ponds of Congamond Lakes Friday through Sunday between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Bannish said.
In fact, the deputies are sworn in as Southwick police officers to allow them to issue citations for violations on the ponds or make arrests for more serious offenses like boating while intoxicated, and as first responders if an emergency occurs on the water.
Bannish said it was too soon to tell what effect losing the patrols might have on water safety.
“We’ll have to see what happens,” he said.
The department does have a boat it uses for patrols, but it is typically only on weekends.
“We schedule them for certain hours,” Bannish said, but added that there are occasions when the boat will be launched late at night “to keep people honest.”
This summer, Bannish is planning on having the department boat in the water on the weekends, and he expects the Massachusetts Environmental Police will patrol every so often.
It, like many other law enforcement agencies across the commonwealth, is also short of personnel.
Staffing at the department has been an issue for several years, which makes it more difficult to man the boats, and there are also budgetary concerns.
However, two new officers started in December, and some of them have expressed an interest in using the boat for patrols more often, Bannish said.
Two officers are needed for the boat, which was purchased three years ago to replace an older boat, which only needed one officer to operate.
Bannish said the new boat is bigger and needs two officers to operate safely.
Cocchi’s announcement followed a report issued by the state Office of the Inspector General in February that concluded the commonwealth’s long-standing process of funding county sheriffs and their jails was “opaque, chaotic and deeply flawed.”
The IG’s report was called for after the majority of Massachusetts’ 14 sheriffs requested more than $100 million to cover spending over their budgets. Only Nantucket and Norfolk County Sheriff’s offices spent within their means every year, according to masslive.com.
Of all the sheriffs’ outfits, Cocchi’s department asked for the most money from the Legislature: $26 million more than the $102 million the state initially gave it for annual expenses, the inspector general’s report found, according to masslive.com.
Robert Rizzuto, spokesperson for the department, said the same report pointed toward the State House as the cause of the problem.
“As noted by the Office of the Inspector General, this situation stems from years of the Legislature’s deficit-driven funding practices dating back to the abolition of county government in 1999,” said Rizzuto in the announcement.
