Broward News & Opinion

Sheriff Gregory Tony has spent the better part of a year warning that Broward County is flirting with disaster. Deputies are leaving, he says. Cities pay more, he says. The county needs to give him more money.

Then he delivered the kind of line that gets television cameras leaning in:

"I am not going to sit here and wait for another helicopter to fall out the sky or more issues with communications or watch me lose 400 plus public safety professionals to only see them go to Miami and Palm Beach… because people will die."

Then he insisted:

"It is not fearmongering. This is a fact."

It sounded urgent and dramatic. But it was aimed at the wrong people. Tony has been hammering county commissioners, scolding county staff and leaning on the cities that contract with BSO for police and fire rescue. The only people he has not confronted are the ones who actually built the system he cannot compete with.

That would be the cities that run their own police departments. The same cities whose retirement packages are pulling his deputies away.

The $73 Million Request That Solves Nothing

Tony asked the county for about $73 million more. A nine percent bump. One of the largest one-year jumps in county history.

He says it is a survival number. Sure, a twenty percent raise gets BSO deputy take-home pay into the same area code as the cities. Apply that to the 1,686 sworn deputies and you burn through $50 to $60 million a year in recurring payroll.

If you add administrative staff and detention deputies, who are even further behind, you clear $100 million just trying to play catch up.

That is before a patrol car, vest or station light gets paid. It does not buy one new helicopter. It does not fix the communications problems he keeps talking about. It does not expand operations.

The entire pile is gone before he can buy a single pair of boots.

And even after all that spending he is still behind. Because the real gap is not salary.

It is biology.

Cities built a retirement advantage BSO can never match

Cities across Broward give their officers something BSO cannot buy at any price. They give time. City pensions let officers retire in their late 40s or early 50s. BSO deputies retire at 60. That difference is not subtle. It shapes entire careers.

An officer who leaves at 48 can spend his 50s earning a second income or building a second career. A BSO deputy who leaves at 60 can't. City officers collect pension checks for decades with inflation protection. BSO deputies collect fewer years with no cost-of-living increase.

Which path do you think a deputy chooses? Which path would anyone choose?

You can tweak the salary chart all you want. You cannot give people back a dozen years of life.

Tony wants taxpayers to believe he can compete with the cities on pay and retirement. But he is chasing father time. Run the numbers straight and the problem comes into focus fast. To buy the same long-term pension value the cities hand out, BSO would have to push deputy salaries so high they would look like a typo on a county spreadsheet.

A starting deputy at about $64,000 today would need to make roughly $138,000 a year to match the city pension advantage. That is over 100 percent jump in take-home pay before the deputy puts on a vest, starts a cruiser or answers a single call.

Even then, the city officer still retires a decade earlier with inflation protection BSO cannot offer. The pay gap is permanent. The sheriff cannot close it. The budget request pretends he can.

Threatening the people who are not responsible

None of this stops the sheriff from aiming his frustration at the wrong crowd.

He has blasted county commissioners in public meetings. He has ripped county staff, saying they are undermining public safety. He has pressured mayors and city managers who contract with BSO for law enforcement.

Meanwhile, the cities that created the arms race have never hired BSO. They run their own departments. They set their own contracts. They wrote the playbook Tony is now trying to chase.

Yet, those are the only people he is not confronting. He is threatening the customers instead of the competitors. It is political malpractice, and it is leaving him isolated.

The political fallout is already spreading

The elected officials, insiders, consultants and anyone who trades gossip inside the Broward bubble all bring up the sheriff these days, and nearly all say the same thing:

Tony is isolating himself. He is burning bridges he needs. He is picking the wrong fights with the wrong people.

This is not a small problem. A constitutional officer with a growing list of enemies does not usually last long in Broward County.

Not when the attacks are unnecessary.

Not when the numbers do not add up.

And not when the same people he is pressuring can't solve the problem anyway.