Do constables' and sheriff's officers get overtime pay? (prepared 2026-09-21)¶
Short answer¶
Yes for deputies, detention officers and other non-exempt staff; no for the elected Sheriff and constables themselves (salaried officials) and no time-and-a-half for ranks of lieutenant and above. Overtime is real money: General Fund overtime spending was $51.1M in FY25 (Sheriff's Office $40.4M) against a $68.5M budget, and $33.5M in the first nine months of FY26 (Sheriff $24.4M) against $69.2M budgeted. Ten sheriff's employees earned $1.2M of overtime among them in 2025.
The rules (Harris County Sheriff's Office policies, hcsopolicy.com; copies in sources/official/hcso_policies/)¶
- Policy 217, Overtime (rev. May 15 2025): "Line personnel are required by law to be compensated for overtime as defined by the FLSA." Non-exempt personnel "will be assigned to 40-hour per week shifts" and "overtime will be paid to non-exempt persons who work more than 40 hours per week with prior supervisory approval." A court slip or subpoena substitutes for prior approval. "Positions equal to and above the rank of lieutenant are considered exempt from FLSA and are not entitled to time and one-half"; majors, captains and lieutenants "may, at the sole discretion of the Sheriff, receive exempt time compensation" at straight time. The Sheriff uses a 40-hour week, not the FLSA 7(k) 171-hours-per-28-days option available to police agencies.
- Policy 218, Compensatory Time (rev. Mar. 28 2025): employees may accrue up to 240 hours of comp time (or a lower cap set by the Sheriff), used at the supervisor's discretion; HCSO may force employees to burn balances. County-wide (ACFR FY2025 Note 1): non-exempt employees earn comp time at 1.5 hours per hour over 40; balances over the 240-hour maximum are paid in cash in the current pay period and all balances are paid at termination; exempt employees earn straight comp time and are paid half of it at termination. Compensatory time payable on the county's books: $1.57M current plus a noncurrent portion (ACFR).
- Policy 216, Work Hours (rev. Feb. 6 2026): the county workweek runs Saturday 12:01 a.m. to Friday midnight; compensable time is governed by Section 8.04 ("Hours Actually Worked") of the Harris County Personnel Policies & Procedures, which also governs the constables' offices. (The county does not post that manual online; it was not retrievable.)
- Policy 244, Extra Employment (rev. Sept. 29 2025): deputies may work approved off-duty "extra jobs" (security, traffic, crowd control) paid directly by the private employer, not the county, subject to caps of 16 hours of combined HCSO and extra-job work in any 24 hours, 72 hours in the work week and 88 hours in any 7-day period. This is separate from overtime and separate from contract patrol.
- Contract patrol (FY27 Vol. I pp. 20-21): 1,344 deputies work for homeowners' associations, MUDs and school districts under county contracts; the customer pays the contract rate to the county and the deputy is a regular county employee on the county pay plan (overtime included). The county covers the gap between contract rates and actual officer cost: $90.8M in FY27, up from $27.9M in FY21, because contract rates are being phased up 8.8% a year to catch up with the pay-parity raises. A Chronicle analysis (Sept. 2026) questions whether that subsidy complies with Local Government Code chapter 351, which requires 100% cost recovery.
- Constables' deputies are county employees under the same Personnel Policies and the same law-enforcement step plan, so the same FLSA rules apply; each constable sets schedules for their office. Precinct-level overtime totals are not published; the Auditor reports only the General Fund total and the Sheriff's share.
The numbers¶
| Measure | FY24 | FY25 | FY26 (to date) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Fund overtime budget | - | $68.5M | $69.2M (adjusted, June 2026) | Auditor monthly reports p. iii |
| General Fund overtime spent | - | $51.1M (75% of budget) | $23.7M at 6 months; $33.5M at 9 months | same |
| Sheriff's Office overtime | $56.6M | $40.4M (Auditor) / $40.5M (Chronicle) | $16.2M at 6 months; $24.4M at 9 months (annualizes to about $32M; Sheriff's office projected about $14M below FY25) | Auditor; Houston Chronicle via Yahoo (top-10 overtime earners, 2025) |
| All other departments' overtime (constables, DA, courts, etc.) | - | $10.7M | $9.1M at 9 months | derived (total minus Sheriff) |
| Jail overtime as share of Sheriff labor budget | 11% (FY25) | FY26 Vol. I p. 17 | ||
| Top 10 overtime earners 2025 | 8 deputies + 2 detention officers, $1.2M combined; Senior Deputy Michael Stephenson paid nearly triple base | Chronicle via Yahoo | ||
| Why it is falling: Commissioners Court funded 150 detention officers and 25 deputies in March 2025 ($3M through 2025; about $13.7M a year) specifically to replace posts "currently being staffed through mandatory overtime" (OMB's Daniel Ramos: "it's becoming unsustainable"); the Sheriff's detention program grew from 1,447 budgeted positions (FY25) to 1,525 (FY26) and 1,667 (FY27), and Volume II lists "detention officers on staff" as "a leading measure for overtime used." Why it may rise again: overtime is paid at 1.5 times a base that rose about 36% under pay parity in FY26 and steps up again in FY27; the DA's office budgeted $602K more overtime in FY27 explicitly for the "pay parity impact," and SB 9 bail-hearing changes add $580K (District Courts), $332K (District Clerk), $155K (Public Defender) and $223K (Pretrial) of overtime. The Sheriff's office said the parity raises' effect on overtime will be measurable "in early FY 2027." |
The elected officials: no overtime, but a lump sum¶
The Sheriff ($330,000) and the eight constables ($305,000 from Oct. 1 2026) are salaried elected officials with no overtime. On Aug. 6 2026, the same day it set the $305,000 salary, Commissioners Court approved one-time payments of $45,000 to each constable and $48,390 to the Fire Marshal ($408,390 in total) under an agreement signed in late July 2026 that treats the raise as if it had taken effect a year earlier, guarantees constable salaries of at least $305,000 through 2030, and bars the nine officials from filing salary grievances or employment suits until 2030. The county's stated rationale is House Bill 4205 (effective Sept. 1 2025), which requires pay parity among sworn peace officers of the same class; State Rep. Sam Harless had asked the Attorney General in October 2025 whether constables must be paid the same as the Sheriff. The agreement was negotiated in executive session as a confidential law-enforcement matter. Judge Hidalgo: "I am against that, especially given the county budget situation." (ABC13, Sept. 5 2026; Houston Chronicle Sept. 2026.) The back pay does not appear in the budget book's Appendix D.
Sources¶
Auditor Monthly Financial Reports for Sept. 30 2025, March 31 2026 and June 30 2026 (General Fund overtime paragraph, p. iii); FY26 Adopted Budget Vol. I p. 17; FY27 Vol. II v2 pp. 892-893, 919, 954-1043; ACFR FY2025 Note 1 (compensated absences); HCSO Policies 216, 217, 218, 244, 249, 704; Houston Public Media 3/7/2025; Houston Chronicle via Yahoo (top 10 overtime earners 2025; contract-patrol subsidy, Sept. 2026); ABC13 9/5/2026 and Dallas Express (constable back pay); FY27 Vol. I v3 pp. 20-21.