Oakland is currently facing an $89 million shortfall this year, and cutting back police overtime is one of the big parts of the city’s complicated plan to balance its budget.
But how much the Oakland Police Department has spent on overtime so far in 2025 is a mystery, at least for now.
In December, City Administrator Jestin Johnson announced he was cutting OPD’s overtime budget by over $25 million, a little over half the total overtime originally budgeted for the fiscal year 2024-2025.
But the Finance Department reported in February that due to “operational constraints and staffing needs,” the city now anticipates much lower savings: $14.45 million.
At last Thursday’s finance committee meeting, Councilmember Zac Unger asked city staff what is being done to reduce police overtime.
Finance Director Erin Roseman referred Unger to the latest quarterly revenue and expenditures report, which describes the money coming in and paid out by Oakland between July and December of 2024.
The report outlines overtime spending by OPD in the second half of 2024, including some efforts to rein in expenditures. As an example, the Ceasefire program reduced overtime expenditures by 22% between September and October 2024, and again by 68% between October and November. However, other units within OPD blew past their goals. The special operations division is projected to overspend its overtime budget by $7 million, based on the first half of the fiscal year. The need to send police to respond to sideshows, provide air support, and operate a mobile field force, were some of the reasons for the excess spending.
Johnson told the councilmembers that the city can’t restrict overtime indefinitely.
“In my mind, I don’t think it’s a sustainable solution,” Johnson said.
On Jan. 29, The Oaklandside sent questions to OPD’s public information officer about the department’s use of overtime in January, including how much money the city approved for overtime. On Feb. 4, a department spokesperson told us via email, “We are unable to provide the requested data at this time. The information requested should be available as early as mid-March.”
We also haven’t been able to get an answer from the city administration about whether Oakland is meeting its overall goal of reducing OPD overtime spending.
City spokesman Sean Maher said in a Feb. 18 email that OPD has been sharing requests for planned overtime expenditures with the city administrator and the mayor’s office. They noted that the administrator recently gave OPD approval to provide additional security for the NBA All-Star weekend. The administration also plans to approve overtime during the upcoming federal holidays of Juneteenth and Memorial Day.
“While review of individual requests for planned overtime approval is occurring on a more frequent basis, the fiscal reporting summarizing overall overtime spending is occurring quarterly,” Maher wrote.
“The frequency of this reporting requires a capacity balancing effort by the administration to support all measures taken to bring the City’s budget into balance,” Maher added.
We asked the city to explain how it’s currently tracking OPD overtime requests. City officials did not respond to those questions.
Oakland is looking at a $265M deficit for the next two-year budget
Regardless of what the final answers are regarding OPD’s overtime spending, Oakland’s immediate budget crisis is looking a little less dire thanks to some other big reductions the city made in recent months.
The city is currently projected to end the fiscal year 2024-2025 with an $89 million shortfall, according to a new report from the Finance Department. This is roughly $40 million down from what the city was previously anticipating, thanks to various budget actions taken by the city in the final months of 2024. In addition to the attempts to rein in OPD overtime, the city also froze two police academies, temporarily shuttered two firehouses, and moved some restricted funds into the general purpose fund. In 2025, the city also laid off dozens of workers and cut grants.
One positive upshot of these efforts is that Oakland is no longer considering the closure of four additional fire stations, which City Administrator Johnson confirmed at a meeting of the Finance Committee on Thursday. The stations will remain funded and open at least through the end of the fiscal year, which ends in June.
But the outlook for the next two-year cycle that starts in July is still very grim.
Oakland faces a $265 million deficit in the next two-year budget. The mayor and city staff are in the process of crafting a plan but details haven’t been released yet.
The consensus among city officials is that Oakland is heading into very difficult times, and some departments are already sounding the alarm about bare-bone budget proposals.
“Almost all available resources will have been potentially exhausted” from the actions taken to balance the budget this fiscal year, according to a presentation from the Finance Department. “No additional resources are available for the FY 2025-27 Biennial Budget.”
Multiple factors are contributing to the city’s structural deficit, including growing costs associated with Oakland’s pension obligations. Another major driver is spending on public safety services, which consume the vast majority of the general purpose fund – the pot of money that Oakland’s mayor and city council have the most discretion on how to spend.
