CUYAHOGA COUNTY, Ohio — Nearly a dozen Cuyahoga County sheriff’s deputies and corrections officers made more than the sheriff.
How does that happen? Overtime that can add up to bigger pensions.
More than 4,600 county employees in departments under the County Executive are eligible for overtime, which can be life-changing in retirement.
News 5 Investigators looked at county overtime numbers.
Data shows eight doctors with the medical examiner’s office top the county’s highest earners in 2025.
But nearly half of the top 50 earners are from the sheriff’s department.
Ten made more than the sheriff himself.
Last week, Sheriff Harold Pretel defended high overtime in his department.
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"Again, you’re asking for volunteers to fill posts. One of the major drivers there is not only the transport, but the guarding of our residents in our custody who are in the hospital. And some members will volunteer every time,” Sheriff Pretel said.
In 2024, county overtime data showed one deputy banked nearly $200K in OT. Without overtime, he would have retired with $89,000. But instead retired in a year where he raked in more than $312K.
We asked Pretel whether he believes employees are trying to get a lot of overtime in order to leave the department with a lot of money in their pockets.
"That is a byproduct of it, and I don’t know if they discussed it when they crafted this contract,” Pretel said.
According to OPERS, one of the state’s retirement systems, overtime counts.
Your retirement is based on your top three or five years of pay.
Under Ohio law, OPERS has some controls through the Contribution-Based Benefit Cap for spike years to mitigate potential long-term financial risk.
But big overtime still counts toward a bigger retirement.
"It’s not surprising that more senior officers are, in fact, putting in for overtime and overtime work on the other side of it, though. I mean, management has to worry about cost control, making sure that taxpayer dollars are well spent,” Case Western Reserve University Business Law Professor Eric Chaffee said.
Chaffee says this may require fancy budgeting.
Earlier this month, County Executive Chris Ronayne raised his concerns about the sheriff’s department's high overtime.
"I’ve seen some fiscal management that needs controls, and that’s the job of the county executive, and that’s what I was hired to do,” Ronayne said.
As Ronayne is trying to control the sheriff’s spending, Pretel is suing Ronanye saying he should control his own finances.
"That is a function of the sheriff’s department, which belongs here belongs with the sheriff’s department. It’s not as simple to just relocate the team somewhere else,” Pretel said.
Pretel filed the lawsuit last week. The county says it can’t comment on pending litigation paid for by your tax dollars.
RELATED: Cuyahoga sheriff files civil lawsuit against county executive in battle over fiscal operations
There’s no telling how long this could play out in court or if both sides will instead come to the table.
