A 20% cut for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in the City of New Orleans’s 2026 budget would worsen “already dangerous” staffing shortages for the troubled agency and make it “impossible” to operate a constitutional jail, Sheriff Susan Hutson said in a scathing court filing this week.
Hutson has asked the federal judge overseeing the jail’s 12-year-long consent decree to block the cuts from being implemented, arguing they “abandon” the city’s obligation under court orders to adequately fund the jail.
The budget reduces the city’s funding for the jail’s day-to-day operations to $32.8 million, an amount that Hutson warned would not be enough to cover OPSO’s personnel alone. She estimates that the sheriff’s office needs at least another $44.5 million in operating expenses for next year, too…