Philly sheriff used money meant to hire deputies for executive raises, tried to double her salary to $285K

Last week, Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal appeared before City Council, seeking nearly $2 million in new support for an office she has described as “consistently underfunded” and “severely short in deputies.”

Bilal’s budget director, Craig Martin, did not mince words: “It’s a money shortage and a body shortage,” adding the office needed the cash to fill 79 vacant deputy jobs.

But city finance records and an internal Sheriff’s Office memo obtained by The Inquirer show Bilal recently diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars intended to hire more uniformed staff — including deputies — to fund hefty raises for her executive staff and other office workers.

Bilal also tried to more than double her $136,083 salary, records show, as part of a plan to dole out even larger raises using money meant for new hires.

City charter provisions barred that salary hike, and officials in the city’s finance department also balked at the other extensive raises Bilal wanted to give to her senior staffers.

Had Bilal succeeded with the proposed 109% raise, her salary would have soared to $285,000, making her the highest-paid elected official in Philadelphia.

Ultimately, in September 2022, finance officials authorized $506,000 in pay bumps for Bilal’s “exempt” staff, generally non-uniformed employees who are not hired through the civil service system.

Bilal declined to comment Monday on the raises or her Council testimony.

Still, she told Council last week that she needs more money, and that she’d been shorted funds in the past to hire a full complement of deputies for her office.

“When I came into the office and looked at the numbers we had to hire, I said ‘OK, let’s start hiring,’” Bilal, elected in 2019, told Council members at an April 4 hearing. “I got from the mayor’s office, ‘No, we don’t have the money.’”

The Sheriff’s Office serves warrants, transports prisoners, handles security in court buildings, and oversees auctions of foreclosed real estate. Historically, the office has paid comparatively low salaries to its deputies, today averaging between $55,000 to $65,000.

In addition to low pay and the deputy shortage, Bilal described a lack of equipment and an aging fleet of vehicles.

But she made no mention of the raises for exempt staff at the hearing, and faced few probing questions.

Councilman Jim Harrity remarked that he had once served as an exempt employee in the Sheriff’s Office and described Bilal as “one my favorite law enforcement people.”

“We need to give you more respect,” he said, “and give you guys more money.”

Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. agreed: “We have to appreciate the job that you and your team do … And we have to do that by making you respected by way of dollars.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney declined to comment on Bilal’s testimony.

City government, in general, has struggled to hire and retain municipal employees since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Kenney’s office last fiscal year increased the sheriff’s personnel budget by $1.5 million in response to its request to aid recruitment, officials said.

In addition, city officials advised departments that they would receive additional personnel funds for a round of modest 3.25% raises to stanch departures by exempt employees. That bonus for the Sheriff’s Office amounted to about $60,000.

But Bilal’s office apparently misunderstood how much money it was meant to receive to top up exempt pay. Instead of $60,000, the office returned a proposal seeking more than $1 million in raises for 30 exempt employees.

The proposed raises averaged around 50%, with some surpassing 80% for Bilal’s inner circle. Although the office proposed pay increases for a couple dozen exempt staffers earning below $70,000, more than $400,000 was aimed at raises for Bilal herself and four other top employees who already earned six figures. Bilal’s chief of staff, Erica Davenport, for example, would have seen her salary climb to $195,000, an 86% raise.

After months of wrangling between finance officials and the Sheriff’s Office, Bilal’s staff returned a revised proposal that contained about $500,000 in raises, now to be covered primarily by tapping the unspent personnel funds.

In a November 2022 Sheriff’s Office memo, obtained by The Inquirer through a Right-to-Know request, a top Bilal aide wrote that the office had been unable to hire enough uniformed employees quickly enough to spend down all of its personnel funding.

So, the leftover funds were to be converted to cover part of the desired pay raises for exempt staff, according to the “justification and allocation” memo.

“The hiring process [of deputies] will not be complete prior to the end of the current fiscal year,” wrote Patrick Lee, Bilal’s chief financial officer. “As an independent/elected office, we are using the opportunity to reallocate a portion of the … funds for our offices’ exempt staff.”

Lee ultimately received a 20% raise, boosting his salary to $120,000.

Other Bilal aides received larger raises, including her second-in-command, Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz, whose salary was increased by 58% to $200,000. (In February, El-Shabazz was fined by the city’s Ethics Board for continuing to operate a private legal practice representing criminal defendants in Philadelphia.)

» READ MORE: Philly sheriff’s top legal adviser has been moonlighting as a criminal defense lawyer

Lee’s memo asserted that tapping into the leftover funds that had been designated for hiring deputies was “needed” to “retain current exempt staff.” Bilal personally reviewed and approved the final pay increases, Lee wrote.

Bilal received only a 5% raise last year, to $142,751, due to a provision in the city charter that caps yearly raises for elected officials.

» READ MORE: Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz has been fined by the Ethics Board for doubling as a criminal defense lawyer in Philly

These types of questionable pay raises for top staff could be detrimental to department morale, according to Tara Bryan, a professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Law enforcement organizations across the country are already dealing with burnout and low morale.

“If you view your leadership as ethical, you’re less likely to be absent, more likely to be committed to the mission and organization and more likely to have higher levels of job satisfaction,” said Bryan, whose research focuses on government and nonprofit leadership and accountability.

It is unclear how the other salary increases were calculated. A spokesperson for Bilal did not respond to questions.

Bryan said that lack of transparency can be problematic.

“What kind of conversations were they having in the organization around how to use that funding? I’d be interested to know what’s happening there,” she said.

Officials in the city’s Finance Department declined to comment on the Sheriff’s Office proposed raises or how finance officials decided to approve the $506,000 for exempt employees.

Bilal, who is running for reelection next month, reiterated her appeal for more personnel hours after the Council hearing at an event April 4 for progressive group Philly For Change.

She portrayed herself as a reformer who took over an office wracked by mismanagement and lacking basic equipment. She said the pandemic had slowed her reforms.

“I am making those changes,” she said. “I ask for your support so I can finish the job. … And when you talk about what things don’t happen, that’s the budget.”

“The Sheriff’s Office has been underbudgeted for decades,” she continued. “And now that I’m working with Council so we can get a commonsense budget, that’s exactly what we are doing, getting a budget to make sure we have the things that we need.”

Inquirer reporter Chris Brennan contributed to this article.