From year one of what is now a 22-year-career at the helm of the Sampson County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Jimmy Thornton has always preached the value of having “skin in the game.”

And this year, with the county facing financial woes that likely will mean cuts to services and possibly a tax increase for residents to shoulder, Thornton said he put his skin in the game early, handing in a 2025-26 budget request that was $371,184 less than what county commissioners approved for his department in 2024-25.

That, coupled with a $90,172 decrease in his 2025-26 request for the Detention Center, along with an agreement to cut two of the jail’s 48 positions, means, Thornton said, he was willing to present a fiscal request that was down a little more than a half million dollars from the previous year’s actual approved budget amount for the two agencies for which he is responsible.

The numbers bear out his claim. Last year, the Sampson County Board of Commissioners approved a $12,572,777 allocation to the Sheriff’s Department, along with another $6,122,037 for the Detention Center, making Thornton’s enacted fiscal plan nearly $18.7 million in 2024-25.

This year’s request, which has not been approved by commissioners, comes in lower, at $12,201,593 for the Sheriff’s Department and $6,031,865 for the Detention Center. Those figures do not factor in the loss of two jail positions which, roughly, including fringe benefits, would be another $90,000 deducted from the total request. Added together, the reduction amounts to just over $500,000.

While sources have said county administrators, headed by interim county manager Jeffrey Hudson, have asked every department head to look for ways to cut budget requests, Thornton insisted he offered up the reductions even before he was asked.

“I know the county is in bad shape, financially, all right,” Thornton pointed out during an interview earlier this week, “so I offered to cut ours right out of the shoot. It’s a tight budget year, everybody knows that, so I needed to have skin in the game. I even told Mr. Hudson he could use us as the example.”

The sheriff said he and Capt. Marcus Smith reviewed their requests, cutting where they could without doing anything that would hinder what he called the safety aspect, then turned it over to Hudson for review, a request, he said that could get whittled down more before it goes to commissioners, along with other department budgets.

“We submitted what our true need is. It’s down from last year. It isn’t overstated in any way. I believe we’re in a good spot; I don’t know of anything else we need, but we got to operate the place, all right, and there are some things that are uncontrollables. But what we submitted,we’re going to make work,” Thornton said. “We always do.”

And while he made cuts, he said he fully recognizes that Hudson and, eventually, commissioners, could bring the ax down again, dropping his request even further.

“They have the option to cut line items in our budget if they want to,” Thornton pointed out. “I hope they stick with what we asked, but you don’t know. I mean, it is going to be a tough year.”

The sheriff called his submitted budget request “bare bones,” and one that focuses on the needs and nothing more. “I’ve never tried to over ask for anything,” the sheriff asserted, “despite what some people might think or say.”

Thornton and his departments have faced some scrutiny and criticism over the last few years because of ballooning budgets that have grown from $8.6 million in 2010 to just over $18.6 million in 2024.

The sheriff makes no apology for the growth in his budgets, noting the need for increased salaries for deputies and jail personnel, and quickly pointing out that his departments only got what each commissioners board approved year after year. He also, with the help of Smith, asserted that these budgets also include grant funding they might be fortunate enough to receive, like one recently implemented that allowed the purchase of a body scanner.

But, he retierated often during the interview that, bottom line, the commissioners have the final say, and the budgets he’s had have all been approved by the county board.

“Hey, they approve the budget, not me,” Thornton asserted. “We’ve been looked after, not left in bad shape, though.”

And he is quick to point out, too, that he’s really never had anyone ask him to reduce his budget. “No one has ever come over to me and asked if there was any way to cut this or that, all right. I am invested in this county, too. I’m a taxpayer. I was born and raised here and I plan to retire here. When it’s all said and done, I want to go home with my head held high because I’ve done the best I can, and I will hold my head high.”

The criticism over his increased budgets, he said, was something he can take because he believes the financial expenses have been necessary. “I’ve been blamed for a lot of things, but I’ll take it as long as everyone’s safe,” he emphasized.

Safety is Thornton’s go-to word when talking about the budget and his departments’ needs. He often uses it in social media posts and he referred to it frequently during the recent interview. It’s not, he said, intended to scare people when he talks about keeping people safe, but it is meant to show that it remains his number one focus.

The reduced budget he has presented to Hudson, he said, protects the safety aspect. “It will work,” he reiterated, “and we don’t sacrifice safety.”

By the numbers

The Sheriff’s Department currently employs 101 sworn deputies, one of the larger departments in size per capita in the surrounding area. Of those, 28 officers are on the road over four shifts, though others, from time to time, also cover the expansive county. The other personnel are scattered through everything from administration, animal control, the courthouse, the county school system, the interdiction team and the drug and investigative divisions.

Thornton quickly pointed out that of those 101 positions on the Sheriff’s Department side, some 20-25 are what he called “positions I didn’t ask for.”

Those positions include the 13 school resource officers housed within the four county school districts and the bailiffs who protect the county’s courtrooms and those who work and come in and out of them each day.

“Look, I didn’t ask for them; I was told I had to have them,” Thornton asserted when asked about the SROs. But he’s quick to point out, when asked, that the SROs are greatly needed and he touts his crew as one of the best around.

“I have the best, quality officers (SROs). There’s not another school system in the state that can touch them,” he boasted.

The sheriff said the county is fortunate that all schools are covered, but, when it comes to the budget and his employees, he is adamant that they were added to his staff.

So, too, were the bailiffs, another set of officers he said were needed but not among those he actually requested to be added to his staff.

“There was a lot of talk a few years ago about increasing safety in our courtrooms, then I was told to staff it.” But, he acknowledged, the added protection was needed. “The right decision was made,” he admitted. “There are a lot of players in a courtroom, and the added security was needed.”

But, when possible, he uses the bailiffs and SROs out on the road, either filling in for deputies or increasing patrols. If schools and courts are closed for holidays, and on weekends, those deputies are utilized elsewhere. The same is true for the interdiction team, whose members also patrol as instructed.

Those deputies, statistics show, served 4,984 civil papers in 2024, 4,948 in 2023, 5,475 in 2022 and 4,984 in 2021. In addition, they responded to 22,742 calls in 2024, 21,805 in 2023, 23,693 in 2022 and 24,763 in 2021.

On the Detention Center side, Thornton currently has 48 budgeted positions, but many of them, six to 12, he estimated, stay unfilled.

Over 30 months or so, the Detention Center was a revolving door, with 54 people coming and going at some point, Smith interjected.

In 2024, there were 2,976 inmates booked into the jail; in 2023, 3,189 and in 2022, 3,088.

Some of those inmates are federal prisoners or out-of-county inmates being housed for other areas. Many stay only a few days, some, the sheriff said, are held for years because of a backlogged court system.

Operating under those conditions in an already problematic environment, Thornton said, required increased salaries, a similar truth for deputies who, he said, at one time could find higher paying law enforcement jobs elsewhere.

Salary woes have leveled off, but the price tag , at least in part, has made the two budgets grow.

But Thornton said the budget numbers which show all those increases don’t really tell the entire story.

Using a spreadsheet put together by sheriff’s administrators, he and Smith pointed to the approved budgets for both departments and then, slowly running their finger down the color-coded sheet of paper, showed the monies returned to the county each year, unspent funds that, Smith said, are returned to the general fund.

Those unverified figures show that in 2010, $682,793 was returned to the county from a total budget of $8.3 million. In 2023, the returned amount was $1.1 million of a $14.2 million total for the two departments the sheriff oversees. Figures for 2024 were not available because an audit for the county was not completed on time and was not available.

“If we don’t need or use it, we don’t spend it,” Thornton pointed out. “That’s the part that doesn’t always get told. But that’s OK, I know.”

With the budget process for 2025-26 ongoing, hanging like a dark cloud, Thornton said it was anybody’s guess what might actually happen.

Commissioners have not yet seen a final budget proposal from Hudson, who has been meeting with department heads during May, along with individual members of the board, to discuss cost-savings, reductions and other avenues to whittle down what has been described as a massive fiscal document that shows far more expenses than the revenue to support it.

One of the newest commissioners, Republican Chip Crumpler, Dist. 3, has been vocal on social media about the budget, the county’s expected revenue, its expenses and services and the hard task of whittling it all down to a workable plan that will give residents needed services while eliminating waste and things the county cannot afford.

A budget, by law, is required to be adopted by July 1, and a public hearing to present the budget to residents must be held before the fiscal plan can be adopted.

Hudson, in calling the process transparent, has said a budget presentation to commissioners is forthcoming.

”Look, I’ve submitted our request. Now we wait,” Thornton said. “We will mold and adapt the best way we can. After 22 years, I’m ever mindful that’s what you have to do. My primary goal is protecting the people of Sampson County, whatever it takes.”