RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KESQ) – Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told the Board of Supervisors today that unmet budget requests in the 2026-27 fiscal year totaling $250 million would likely require him to slash hundreds of positions, most of them patrol deputies.
“This is a massive number that we cannot recover from,” Bianco told the board during the outset of budget hearings Monday at the County Administrative Center in Riverside. “The proposed budget for us is absolutely disastrous.”
Bianco said roughly $138 million of the $250 million request that the sheriff’s department submitted to the Executive Office for consideration, and wasn’t accepted, amounts to “stay flat funding” to keep the agency about where it was in staffing during the current fiscal year. Without the board’s approval of that figure, 622 patrol deputy positions would need to be slashed, the sheriff said. Or, if he resorted to leaving deputy positions untouched and resorted to cuts to administrative and other personnel, the number may be 1,000, he said.
“Achieving these kinds of reductions would require a phased multi-year implementation,” Bianco said, explaining that to do it all in one fell swoop would be too great a threat to public safety…