Oswego County Budget 2027 LTE/OP-ED

It’s the time of year again for budgets to be presented, reviewed and approved. This means that the Legislature in Oswego County will be presenting a Draft Budget for Legislators to review. The Legislature is still 18 Republicans and 7 Democrats.

Using last years budget as a guide I thought it might be good to show where the Republican Majority’s priorities are:

The 2026 Department of Social Services Budget was proposed by the Department as $64,024,213 and was adopted at $61,975,689. That’s a decrease from requested of $2,308,524. (About 4%) The 2026 Sheriff Department’s Budget was proposed by the Department as $26,648,213 and was adopted as $26,203,005. That’s a decrease from requested of $445,208. (About 2%)

What makes it even harder to understand is that after local, state and federal aid, the cost to the Oswego County Taxpayers for the DSS Budget was $10,445,037, and the Sheriff’s Budget was $23,789,723.

Now consider that the estimated cost of overtime for the Sheriff’s Road Patrol this year is $925,000. The overtime for DSS in the 2026 Budget was $5,000, with Additional hours authorized for certain circumstances at an additional $45,000, so a Total of $50,000.

According to the Full-Time Position Vacancy Report (10/2/26) from the Finance and Personnel Committee agenda, the Sheriff’s Department has 7 vacant positions. The same reports states that DSS has 55 vacant positions.

Based on these numbers it seems apparent that the priority in this county is the Sheriff’s Department. We have an underfunded Department of Social Services that cost the county half as much as the Sheriff that was given a much lower reduction. DSS is still without a contract the last I knew, and they can’t keep staff. Do they just stop helping people at close of business because they won’t be paid overtime? It’s more likely they aren’t given overtime and they end up doing a lot of work “off the clock” to help the citizens of this county.

With more homeless people and hungry children in the county, and more cuts coming in January from the BBB, I would hope they are making changes to their priorities, BUT my experience with this Republican Majority is they think they have pollical positions instead of being elected officials and they will keep making priorities that don’t help the average constituent in this county. I encourage people to educate themselves and go to the upcoming Budget Public Hearing coming up in December at the Legislature meeting.

Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts.      Jim Cannon, Fulton NY