How the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office plans to spend $1 billion next year

Miami-Dade County admin September 15, 2026 0 Comments

How the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office plans to spend $1 billion next year

There’s a fight over how much tax money should go to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office next year, but the county’s mayor and sheriff agree on one thing: the law enforcement agency needs to spend at least $1 billion next year.

This will be the when the county spends more than $1 billion on law enforcement, making the Sheriff’s Office the top single expense in Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s $14.3 billion budget proposal. The spending plan faces a final vote Thursday before the County Commission.

Levine Cava and Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz disagree on how much tax funding the Sheriff’s Office needs in the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

The mayor wants to add $55 million in tax funding for the 4,500-person independent Sheriff’s Office — a 6% increase — but Cordero-Stutz wants almost twice that.

“This budget is about three things: results, responsibility and readiness,” Cordero-Stutz told commissioners at the board’s first budget hearing on Sept. 3. “We have proven that our approach to public safety is working. We have also worked hard to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

Given current vacancy rates among the deputy ranks, the mayor’s administration contends the Sheriff’s Office won’t be able to hire for all of its requested positions in 2027. The mayor’s budget office says the Levine Cava budget proposal reflects a more realistic hiring pace that will increase the Sheriff’s Office staff without Miami-Dade having to divert dollars from elsewhere in the county budget to fund what are likely to still be vacant positions when 2028 begins.

At the Sept. 3 hearing, Levine Cava noted her Sheriff’s Office budget proposal has the most spending on law enforcement in Miami-Dade’s history.

“We did it because of the fundamental value of public safety,” she said.

If the sheriff and mayor don’t reach a deal in the next 48 hours or so, commissioners will be left to resolve the dispute. But while there’s friction over how much of the county’s pool of tax dollars Miami-Dade can afford to give the Sheriff’s Office, the roughly $52 million in dispute only represents about 5% of the agency’s overall budget request to the county.

Here’s a look at the sheriff’s 2027 budget proposal:

More deputies and more civilian staff for the Sheriff’s Office

While most cities within the county have their own police department, the Sheriff’s Office is the lone law enforcement agency for more than half of Miami-Dade. It also has countywide responsibilities, including serving warrants, court security, responding to civil unrest and helping with school safety.

The agency employs more than 3,000 deputies, detectives and other law enforcement officers — a number that would grow by about 80 positions under Cordero-Stutz’s budget request. The civilian staff of roughly 1,400 would grow by 120 slots — a mix of clerical and tech positions and staff for the county’s 911 center. Overall, the Sheriff’s Office plans to spend roughly $872 million on payroll, health insurance and other benefits — easily the largest expense in the agency’s $1.25 billion budget proposal, according to a detailed summary provided by the county’s budget office.

Overtime boosts the Sheriff’s Office budget

Like most large county agencies, the Sheriff’s Office relies on overtime. And that’s expensive — typically 50% more than an employee’s regular hourly rate. Overtime also provides a reliable compensation boost for deputies who can count on extra shifts or hours. A Miami Herald analysis of county employment data from 2024 found the average Miami-Dade police officer — the position now called a deputy — earned about $133,000 a year. That figure includes overtime compensation.

Miami-Dade’s sheriff inherited union pay rates from the mayor and commission

Union agreements govern the compensation for deputies and other rank-and-file employees of the Sheriff’s Office, and Cordero-Stutz is using that dynamic to ask for more dollars from Miami-Dade.

Cordero-Stutz notes that it was Levine Cava and the commissioners who approved the 2023 labor deal the Republican sheriff inherited when she won the 2024 election — the first election of a Miami-Dade sheriff since the 1960s. That deal expires on Sept. 30, but Cordero-Stutz says the ongoing impact of bonuses and other benefits amount to about $63 million worth of extra expenses in 2027.

Nearly $4 million for sergeants-at-arms for elected leaders

Within the Sheriff’s Office budget is $3.9 million for a key perk for local elected officials: . That’s the term for the plainclothes deputies assigned to elected officials to provide both security for the County Commission chambers as well as on-call driving services for the county mayor and commissioners in SUVs, complete with police lights. The Sheriff’s Office sergeant-at-arms budget for 2027 is about 20% higher than this year’s.

A new Sheriff’s Office expense: President Trump’s G20 summit in Doral

In December, the Sheriff’s Office expects to spend an extra $5 million in overtime on security for the G20 summit President Donald Trump is hosting at his Doral resort — an event that will draw heads of state from around the globe.