Sheriff: “I Don’t Work for You.” Commissioner: “We Set Your Budget.”

At the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners’ meeting on September 8, 2026, Sheriff Brian Chism drew a line with the board: “No disrespect, ma’am, but I don’t work for you. I work for the citizens.” Commissioner Pat Sykes did not dispute it. She simply named the lever she holds anyway: “I can tell you we do set your budget and that is part of our job, and we can amend your budget at any time.” She is right — and it is just as true in all 100 North Carolina counties. When a county wants to rein in or end a surveillance contract — Flock, Fusus, Axon — the most direct lever is not a lawsuit or a policy fight. It is the budget.

This is a playbook for any North Carolina Board of County Commissioners: how far the budget power reaches, what the county must still fund no matter what, and where the law is untested. Counties have already used it — Macon County defunded its Sheriff’s Flock cameras, and New Hanover County cancelled its contract before the term was up.

North Carolina law gives the elected Board of County Commissioners control of the sheriff’s budget. No statute sets a minimum dollar amount or a percentage of the county budget for the sheriff. No reported North Carolina decision has ordered a board to restore a sheriff’s appropriation.

The sheriff is a constitutional officer, elected by the voters under Article VII, Section 2 of the North Carolina Constitution. The Constitution creates the office. It does not fund it. The General Assembly assigned that power to the county board, and it set only a short list of protected items.

This post walks through the statutes and the case law, identifies the legal minimum, and states plainly where the law is untested.

The board sets the amount

The Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act puts the appropriation decision with the governing board. Under G.S. 159-13(a), the board appropriates “by department, function, or project” and may adopt appropriations “in such sums as the governing board may consider sufficient and proper, whether greater or less than the sums recommended in the budget.”

The sheriff’s request carries no legal weight of its own. In Hubbard v. County of Cumberland, 143 N.C. App. 149 (2001), the Court of Appeals called the sheriff “an independent constitutionally mandated officer.” It then said the board “is not obligated to accept a submitted budget proposal from a sheriff.” The county’s duty begins only after adoption: “once it approves a budget and salary plan and enacts such in the budget ordinance, the County is obligated to abide by the budget ordinance and pay out monies appropriated therefor.”

Two rules follow. The board decides the number each year. A cut in the middle of a fiscal year requires an amendment to the budget ordinance.

The board sets the headcount

G.S. 153A-103(a) states it directly: “the board of commissioners may fix the number of salaried employees in the offices of the sheriff.” The statute then lists the limits on that power:

• The sheriff has “the exclusive right to hire, discharge, and supervise the employees in his office.” The board decides how many positions exist. The sheriff decides who fills them.
• The sheriff “is entitled to at least two deputies who shall be reasonably compensated by the county.”
• The sheriff may also have the school resource officers needed to satisfy agreements under G.S. 162-26.5(b), on top of the headcount the board fixes.

The General Assembly could have guaranteed a staffing ratio, a per-capita figure, or the prior year’s level. It guaranteed two deputies.

The minimum the law requires

The legal minimum comes down to six items. The jail drives the real cost. Everything else above this list is the board’s choice.

For most counties, the legal minimum works out to the sheriff’s salary, two reasonably paid deputies, a jail that meets State standards, and enough staff to serve process and attend court. Patrol, investigations, specialty units, public-school SROs, equipment, and technology contracts all sit above that line.

What the floor looks like in the Cape Fear

The point of the legal floor is easier to see with real numbers. Below are the five Cape Fear–region counties, using each county’s adopted FY2026–27 budget. “Total Sheriff’s Department Budget” is the Sheriff’s Office appropriation plus the jail (the sheriff runs the jail under G.S. 162-22). Against that total sits the statutory floor — the sheriff’s salary, two deputies, a jail staffed to State minimum standards, and capacity to serve process and attend court. Everything above the floor is discretionary under the budget power: the board is not legally required to appropriate it. A Flock, Fusus, or Axon contract — tens of thousands of dollars a year — lives entirely inside that discretionary zone.

How these numbers were built. Totals are the adopted FY2026–27 Sheriff’s Office appropriation plus the jail, taken straight from each county’s budget ordinance or budget book: New Hanover (Sheriff’s Office $100,852,667, with the jail budgeted inside it), Onslow (“Sheriff’s Office and Detention Center” combined, $48,685,778), Brunswick (Sheriff’s Office $31,147,216 + Detention Center $16,787,373), Pender (Sheriff’s Office $11,555,982 + Jail $5,015,864), and Columbus (Sheriff Patrol $9,729,536 + Detention Center $5,718,484). Figures marked “est.” are not adopted line items: the deputy and process/court figures are illustrative estimates (no statute fixes those dollar amounts), and New Hanover and Onslow do not break the jail out separately, so their jail figures are estimates of the portion inside the combined total. The “discretionary” figure is a legal characterization — money the board is not required by statute to appropriate — not a prediction that a court would let a board cut every dollar of it. As the next-to-last section explains, a sheriff would argue the true functional floor is higher.

The pattern holds across every county: roughly 60 to 70 percent of the sheriff’s budget sits above the statutory floor. That is the room the board controls. Whether a board would ever cut that deep is a political question, not a legal one — but a single surveillance contract is a rounding error inside the red band, which is why declining to fund one is the easy case.

What the board controls, and what it does not

The board controls the size of the budget. It does not control how the sheriff spends it.

• Line items. Appropriations run to the department, function, or project level. The NC Sheriffs’ Association’s 2024 Finance Reference Manual states that line items “have no legal significance,” and that neither the board nor the finance officer “can direct the sheriff as to how to spend appropriated money if there is a balance left at the department or function level.” This is the sheriffs’ own reading, and it tracks G.S. 159-13.
• Personnel choices. A reduced headcount leaves the choice of who stays with the sheriff, under G.S. 153A-103(a)(1).
• Non-appropriated funds — and their limits. Sheriffs can buy software or hardware with money the board never appropriated: federal equitable-sharing (asset-forfeiture) funds, which must “supplement, not replace,” the agency’s budget (cutting the appropriation because the sheriff holds them risks expulsion from the program), and the state unauthorized-substances tax, which sends 75% of proceeds to the investigating agency (G.S. 105-113.113). Those dollars stay with the sheriff whatever the board does — so a surveillance contract can be funded around a budget cut. The board’s counter-lever is not the money but the conditions: it controls county property, the county IT network, and county facilities, and can set policy on what technology is installed on them, integrated with county systems, or operated on county property — and require transparency and reporting as a condition of that access.

The result: a board can shrink the office, but it cannot pick which programs or contracts survive inside it. A smaller budget forces the sheriff to set priorities. It does not set them for him.

When — and how — to pull the lever

A board does not have to wait years. There are three clean points to act:

• At annual budget adoption. The board sets the number each year — it can simply decline to appropriate for the program going forward.
• At renewal or expiration. Refuse to fund the next term. Many of these agreements run term-by-term, and most municipal vendor contracts include a “subject to annual appropriation” clause that lets the government walk when funds are not appropriated.
• Mid-term. The standard Flock agreement carries no cancellation fee and no early-termination penalty — a county can end it early and simply forfeits fees already paid (there is no refund). New Hanover County did exactly this — it voted to cancel before the term was up.

Read the contract — it is friendlier to cancellation than many assume. The standard Flock agreement imposes no termination-for-convenience fee and no liquidated damages; the only financial consequence of ending mid-term is that prepaid fees are not refunded. That is what New Hanover County ran into: Flock acknowledged the cancellation but had not agreed to the refund the county requested, and physical removal can take weeks — friction, not a penalty, and none of it changes who holds the decision. (Our breakdown.)

Two deadlines matter more than any fee. The agreement is billed annually (the first year invoiced at signing), and it auto-renews for another full term unless the county gives written non-renewal notice before the current term ends — 30 days in Brunswick’s 24-month agreement. Miss that window and the clock resets. Check your county’s Order Form for the exact term and notice period, calendar the non-renewal deadline, and act at adoption or renewal.

What a sheriff would argue

The statutes favor the board, but a sheriff facing a deep cut has real arguments. Readers deserve them.

• The office cannot be starved out of existence. The sheriff would argue that a constitutional office implies enough funding to perform the duties the law assigns. North Carolina courts have recognized inherent authority for the judicial branch to secure the resources it needs. No reported decision extends that reasoning to sheriffs. The argument remains open.
• “Reasonably compensated” has teeth. Pay set too low to recruit or retain the two required deputies invites a challenge under G.S. 153A-103(a)(2).
• The jail floor is higher than it looks. Staffing a jail to State standards, around the clock, is expensive. Understaffing creates liability for the county, not only for the sheriff.
• Public safety and politics. A cut to the statutory minimum would end patrol and investigations in most counties. The voters who elect the sheriff also elect the board.

No North Carolina appellate court has decided how far below a functioning office a board may go. A board that cut to the statutory minimum would likely become the test case.

Bottom line

The Board of Commissioners holds the purse. It must pay the sheriff’s salary for the term, fund two reasonably paid deputies, run a jail that meets State standards, and leave enough capacity for process and court. Beyond that, the size of the sheriff’s office is a policy choice the board makes each year, and the public can hold the board to it.

For the surveillance fights in the Cape Fear and across North Carolina, the takeaway is simple: a Flock contract, a Fusus subscription, or an Axon deal lives well above the legal floor. It is a line the board can decline to fund — the same lever Macon County and New Hanover County have already pulled. (See also our model resolution and county surveillance-funding resolution.)

Authorities cited

• N.C. Const. art. VII, § 2 (election of sheriffs)
• G.S. 153A-92 (compensation of officers and employees)
• G.S. 153A-103 (number of employees in the sheriff’s office)
• G.S. 153A-149 (property taxes; jails and law enforcement as authorized purposes)
• G.S. 153A-221 (minimum standards for local confinement facilities)
• G.S. 159-13 (the budget ordinance)
• G.S. 162-22 (custody of the jail)
• G.S. 162-26.5 (school resource officers)
• Hubbard v. County of Cumberland, 143 N.C. App. 149 (2001)
• In re Alamance County Court Facilities, 329 N.C. 84 (1991) (inherent power of the courts)
• NC Sheriffs’ Association, Sheriff’s Office Finance Reference Manual (2024)
• UNC School of Government, Local Government Authority to Provide and Fund School Resource Officers (2025)

This post discusses general principles of North Carolina law. It is not legal advice about any specific county’s budget, and it creates no attorney-client relationship.