Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal says chronic staffing shortages and other problems in her department could be resolved with $19.3 million in new funding.
At a budget hearing Tuesday, Bilal asked City Council to allocate $54.9 million to her office in the upcoming fiscal year, or a 54% increase over the office’s current budget of $35.5 million.
That’s the largest requested funding bump, percentage-wise, of any department in the city this year.
“We need staffing,” Bilal said. “We need funding.”
A relic of the city’s 19th-century county government, the Philadelphia sheriff is independently elected but relies on the city for much of its funding. Its duties include property auctions, prisoner transportation, courthouse security, and serving court orders.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 includes essentially no new funding for the sheriff’s office.
But Bilal argued she needs more money to open a local training academy in the city to address the ongoing deputy shortage, expand bike patrol and K-9 units, and continue with community outreach efforts, like food giveaways and free healthcare clinics.
“This office has operated under constrained funding levels, resulting in ongoing staffing challenges and impacts to service delivery,” Bilal said.
Bilal has appeared before council in prior years to argue the agency deserves double-digit budget increases — she sought about $20 million last year as well, along with a proposal for a new headquarters — while usually ending up with a much smaller amount.
Although Bilal said that the office has been historically underfunded, its budget has increased by about 38% since 2019, when it was $26 million.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Councilmembers Cindy Bass, Jimmy Harrity, and Curtis Jones Jr. praised Bilal, with Jones crediting her office’s handling of civil unrest in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.
“If you read some of the daily publications, you’d think the sheriff’s department was going to hell in a handbasket,” Bass said. “I just want to say thank you for all the work you do.”
Bass also quizzed Bilal on reports about the slow pace of deed processing for sheriff sales. Sheriff deed transfers are down 76% this year to date compared to 2019, according to city real estate records.
The sheriff argued that buyers complaining about delays were seeking to “jump the line” or had simply failed to complete required tax compliance forms.
“Sheriff sales are going on,” said Bilal. “We are back, full blast.”
A former 27-year Philadelphia police veteran, Bilal was first elected in 2019 after pledging to reform an office plagued by decades of scandal and controversy.
But new problems emerged almost immediately after she was sworn in. The sheriff’s office has at times struggled over the past five years to perform the office’s core duties.
The city paid more than $1 million to settle three whistle blower lawsuits filed in 2021 by former Bilal staffers who said they were fired for exposing illegal and unethical practices, including misappropriation of funds and extreme sexual harassment.
A 2022 city controller’s audit dinged the office for poor accounting practices and questionable spending, which Bilal primarily attributed to her predecessor. A subsequent Inquirer report found that Bilal had continued a practice of diverting millions of dollars into an off-budget discretionary account, purchasing DJ services, promotional material, and a $9,000 costume for the office mascot, Deputy Justice.
Tax-delinquent property sales were halted for nearly three years after Bilal’s office circumvented the city’s Law Department and issued a no-bid contract during COVID in 2021 to an online auction company. Sales resumed in mid-2024, but at a much slower pace. The city’s delinquent property tax balance has meanwhile grown by more than $76 million since 2020, while the backlog of unsold properties awaiting sheriff sale has doubled.
Major delays in finalizing auctions have also been a persistent problem, with some buyers waiting a year or longer to receive their deeds.
In December 2024, a panel of Philadelphia judges took the rare action of filing a court order demanding that Bilal address courthouse security lapses that had led to delays in criminal proceedings. Even some judges said they didn’t feel safe, as security incidents such as threats and assaults tripled between 2019 and 2024.
The Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, Philadelphia’s fiscal watchdog, voted unanimously in March 2025 to recommend the abolition of the sheriff’s office, along with the Register of Wills.
City officials have taken no action.
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