COEUR d’ALENE — With the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office poised to outspend its increased budget time for overtime seven months before the end of the fiscal year, mainly due to overtime worked at the county jail, commissioners agreed this week to inject another $1.3 million into the budget. 

Commissioners voted unanimously in March to increase KCSO’s fiscal year 2026 overtime budget from $925,000 to $1.4 million as a stopgap. In an April 16 letter to the board, Capt. Jeremy Hyle said he expected the agency to overspend that budget by the end of this month. 

Bruce Mattare and Marc Eberlein voted Tuesday to increase the overtime budget again, this time to $2.7 million for the fiscal year, at the request of the sheriff’s office — roughly three times the original overtime budget for 2026. Commissioner Leslie Duncan wasn’t present for the meeting. 

Mattare reiterated his concerns that the sheriff’s office has greatly underestimated its overtime budget for several years in a row. 

“I don’t want to be in a situation where we’re telling the sheriff’s office how to do their job,” Mattare said. “On the flip side, it’s incumbent upon them to present numbers that are realistic.” 

Eberlein agreed. 

“I would like to see (the budget) be stable instead of constantly fluxing,” he said. 

Overtime costs have increased year over year, according to KCSO’s data. In 2023, the sheriff’s office spent about $1.5 million for roughly 31,300 hours of overtime. The agency spent $2.1 million for about 35,700 overtime hours in 2024 and $2.4 million for about 36,100 overtime hours in 2025. 

“It’s actually going up a couple of grand every year,” Mattare said. 

“Costs go up,” Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris replied. 

Multiple factors drive overtime hours at the jail, according to the sheriff’s office, making it difficult to precisely predict how much overtime will be needed. Fluctuations in the inmate population, court-ordered transports to hearings and appointments, and minimum staffing needs all contribute. 

“We don’t know how many of those we’re going to have every year,” Norris said, adding that his agency is “dealing with an antiquated overtime system” that makes it challenging to account for deputy time. 

Norris told commissioners that increasing the overtime budget by another $1.3 million was appropriate and that approving less funds would increase the risk of “overdoses, escapes and deaths” in the jail for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. 

“We’re asking for $1.3 million to keep this community safe and keep order inside the jail,” he said. 

The additional funds will come from the county’s facilities master plan fund, which contains about $9 million. 

“That’s really the only place to take that from, unless the board wants to dip into emergency funds,” Finance Director Brandi Falcon told the board.