MASSACHUSETTS SHERIFFS failed to report to the state tens of millions of dollars in transactions made through private accounts that were not subject to oversight — one of the numerous factors that prompted a watchdog to warn that the county law enforcement officers’ budgeting is rife with “chaos.”
In a 190-page report released Monday, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro called the transactions from sources such as inmate commissary accounts his “biggest concern going forward” but said it’s “unclear” whether the practice is against Massachusetts law. He also found that sheriffs often overspend their budget allocations and move around payroll funding to cover other needs, masking the size of their deficits in the process.
The report puts an emphatic punctuation mark on an issue that has roiled the halls of power for nearly a year, as lawmakers grew frustrated by sheriffs asking for considerable funding injections and sought an independent probe of what they deemed questionable practices. But it also faults the executive branch and Legislature for lapses in oversight and expectation-setting that contributed to the upheaval.
Sheriffs, lawmakers, and the Executive Office for Administration and Finance lack a shared understanding on what the office of sheriff should even entail, let alone how the state should fund mandated programs like cost-free communications for incarcerated people, or how sheriffs should handle some fees they collect. “To put it in sheriffs’ terms,” he said in a statement alongside the report. “it’s a bit like the wild west.”
Sheriffs collect money through various aspects of their work, including charges collected from non-criminal services they provide known as “civil process,” paid details, and inmate commissary accounts. And some sheriffs’ offices have different accounting procedures, in some cases improperly mixing these revenues with other funding sources.
It’s not uncommon for state agencies to collect revenue from some other means than taxes, the inspector general’s office wrote, but instead of remitting the money to the state and then spending only what Beacon Hill appropriates, sheriffs steered it through separate accounts.
Altogether, investigators found that sheriffs used more than 120 private bank accounts, from which they spent more than $42 million in fiscal year 2025 and had another $36 million remaining at the budget year’s end.
“The Commonwealth’s banking and accounting systems are designed with built-in checks and balances to enforce certain internal controls,” Shapiro wrote. “In addition, they provide transparency into revenue and expense data, which itself is a control. Activity outside of the state accounting system presents, at a minimum, an internal control weakness that needs to be mitigated.”
Another area of concern for Shapiro was that some of the sheriff’s offices engaged in “illegal deficit spending,” or continuing to expend funds even when they were already in the red. A spokesperson for the IG said his office is not recommending any civil or criminal charges. Instead, he said he’s confident “all stakeholders agree that past improper and illegal practices cannot continue.”
Both the executive branch and the state comptroller have long allowed agencies to dip into their payroll accounts to cover other expenses, the IG wrote, which sheriffs’ offices exploited to “make their overall deficits hard to track.” Meanwhile, lawmakers tend to underfund sheriffs through the annual state budget, and over the years they have failed to clarify a constellation of outdated laws governing the offices.
Many of the spending problems have been brewing for years, but they burst into the spotlight last summer, when Gov. Maura Healey proposed steering $163 million to sheriffs’ offices on top of the $738 million they already received through the annual state budget.
Legislative leaders balked at the request. They questioned sheriffs’ arguments that the departments needed so much more money to cover medically assisted treatment for substance use disorder and a mandatory “no-cost calls” program allowing incarcerated people to communicate with loved ones at no charge.
Lawmakers pledged to “rein in questionable spending practices and restore public confidence in the sheriffs’ operations,” and they tasked Shapiro’s office with probing the situation.
While sheriffs have indeed absorbed new legislative mandates to provide no-cost calls and substance use treatment, the inspector general’s office found that “many of the sheriffs failed to rein in discretionary spending despite fiscal challenges.”
“How we got to this point no longer matters. Sheriffs’ offices have been Commonwealth agencies for more than 25 years,” Shapiro wrote. “It is time for the chaos to stop.”
The inspector general’s recommendations range from immediately actionable, like the Suffolk County sheriff’s office ceasing use of its employee as Winthrop deputy harbormaster, to longer-term, like Beacon Hill fully funding collective bargaining raises for sheriffs to avoid the need for a mid-year financial infusion.
Some sheriffs’ offices are already making cuts, and lawmakers are on the verge of some reforms. Shapiro noted that both the House and Senate versions of the latest annual state budget set for negotiations break out some areas of spending into additional line items, aligning with his recommendation to better erect guardrails around how money should be used.
Sean Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Senate Ways and Means Committee chair Michael Rodrigues, said senators would “look to continue making meaningful and much-needed reforms in the near future.” A spokesperson for House Speaker Ron Mariano on Monday said only that lawmakers would review the final report.
Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick Cahillane, who is president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association, thanked Shapiro for his work.
“The Sheriffs will carefully evaluate the report’s findings and recommendations and will study and deliberate them as part of our continued efforts to strengthen operations, enhance accountability, and ensure responsible use of public resources across the Commonwealth,” Cahillane said in a statement.
