Pistol permit law cost Mobile County Sheriff’s Office $623,000 last year, sheriff says

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - With pistol permits voluntary, fees to sheriff’s offices across the state took a steep nosedive in 2023.

The Alabama Legislature created a mechanism to reimburse sheriffs for some of that loss, but Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said it is not nearly enough to make up the difference. He told FOX10 News that he just received the final figure for the loss the department incurred in 2023 – a little more than $623,000.

Burch said that has forced the department to ask the Mobile County Commission make up for the loss of money used to pay for training and equipment.

“County Commission’s been great to us with the funding,” he said. “However, they have many other departments other than the Sheriff’s Office that they have to fund. And, you know, it’s crippling from an operational standpoint.”

The law passed by the Legislature in 2022 took affect Jan. 1 of last year. Lawmakers argued that people should not have to pay to exercise their Second Amendment right. Some people still obtain pistol permits – and pay the fee – so they can carry concealed guns in other states. But many people do not.

That has resulted in a net loss to sheriff’s offices of between $15 million and $16 million, according to the Alabama Sheriff’s Association.

“It affected all 67 of our counties. … I makes a major impact,” said Jimmy Lambert, executive director of the association.

Lambert told FOX10 News that the impact has been even greater on rural sheriffs, where the loss of $40,000 can be a make-or-break situation.

Lambert said it indirectly impacted staffing in some places, as sheriffs have had to pull money from their general funds to cover expenses previously paid with pistol permit fees. He pointed to Choctaw County Sheriff Scott Lolley.

“The sheriff himself was having to do a majority of the patrolling because he did not have the funding to hire a deputy,” he said.

In some cases, Lambert added, larger sheriff’s offices have loaned radios to departments in small, rural counties so they could communicate.

There’s pending legislation that would provide more funds for expenses that pistol permit fees traditionally have paid for:

• HB 255 would provide for a $50-per-document fee paid by private companies that use sheriff’s departments to serve court papers.
• HB256 would increase the payment sheriffs get from the state government to extradite out-of-state prisoners from $8 to $100 per day. It also would pay raise the mileage reimbursement, currently at 10 cents a mile, to the rate paid to government employees using their private vehicles. That is tied to an amount determined by the IRS for tax deductions, currently 65.5 cents per mile.
• HB274 would raise the state jail food reimbursement from $2.25 per day per prisoner to $3.25 per day per prisoner.

Lambert said those would help but would not make up the difference.

“In some areas, you either have layoffs or you’re at a point where you’re not able to hire a deputy to come on,” he said. “Or your salaries just can’t be at what the at the levels they were because the counties that are now having to try to help the sheriff backfill as best they can. But the funding still doesn’t reach the levels of what they lost.”

Burch said he feels for some of his counterparts in different parts of the state.

“We’re fortunate that we did have a little surplus – it’s gone now – but the smaller agencies around the state have had to lay deputies. … It’s really unfortunate because it affects those communities.”