*UPDATED 10/6/2026
We can now confirm that between December 22, 2024 and September 26, 2026, the Sheriff’s Office spent $23,547,749 on overtime. Ugarte assumed office January 1, 2025 and FY 2026 ended this past September 30. Thus, with the exception of the last 9 days of 2024, Ugarte was directly responsible for the entire expenditure.
The County originally provided us with a spreadsheet that was inaccurate, even though we asked them to reverify the figures and they reconfirmed them. Today we spoke to Danielle Chavez, who is Ugarte’s Budget Operations Manager, and she provided us with updated figures.
Chavez confirmed that the County earmarked only $3,085,000 for overtime pay for the Sheriff’s Office in FY 2025 and the same amount for FY 2026. We learned that the County transferred to them approximately $3 million in additional funding for overtime during FY 2026, and that most of the $5.9 million budget gap for FY 2026 is overtime pay.
There can be no possible excuse to spend $23.5 million on overtime pay in only 7 fiscal quarters and we hope and expect the Commissioners Court will call Ugarte to account.
By comparison, the El Paso Police Department has about 1,400 employees, including civilians. Of their $198 million budget for FY 2026, $11.4 million were budgeted for overtime and in the 3rd quarter the staff projected the department would finish underbudget at the end of the 4th quarter.
What is truly incredible is that the Commissioners Court, since last April, has been demanding the same figures we published and has so far received nothing!
This is a total fiasco.