💰 UPDATE 2026: $7.2 Million Over Budget — And Beacon Hill Signed Off
In February 2026, Massachusetts Inspector General Jeffrey S. Shapiro released a 62-page preliminary report on how the Commonwealth’s 14 sheriffs handle money. His verdict, in his own words: the process is “opaque, chaotic and deeply flawed.” A 190-page final report followed, documenting a combined $110 million deficit across the 14 sheriffs’ offices in a single fiscal year.
Barnstable County did not come out clean.
The Numbers
- Sheriff Buckley’s office was allotted $34.4 million for fiscal 2025.
- It spent $41.6 million.
- That is a $7.2 million overspend — in one year.
- Over two years, her office’s spending rose 33 percent, while its appropriation rose 4 percent.
A separate June 2026 finding revealed that Massachusetts sheriffs collectively held roughly $36 million in accounts sitting outside state oversight entirely. The Inspector General described sheriffs’ spending practices as, and we are not embellishing here, “wild west.”
Now Here Is the Part That Should Actually Enrage You
We are going to be honest with you, because being right matters more to us than being loud: the Inspector General did not lay this solely at the sheriffs’ feet. He blamed the Legislature too — and the finding is worse than simple overspending.
Shapiro found that the state has been deliberately underfunding sheriffs’ offices for years, fully expecting those offices to blow past their budgets and then come back for supplemental appropriations after the fact. The IG’s review of the records found the overspending happened “with the approval” of the Legislature and the Commonwealth’s top finance and budgeting agencies.
Read that again slowly. The budget everyone votes on in public is not the real budget. It is a number everybody involved already knows is fiction. The real spending gets ratified quietly, later, after the money is gone, when no voter is watching and no headline will be written.
That is not an accounting error. That is a system engineered so that nobody is ever accountable — not the sheriff who overspends, because Beacon Hill approved it; and not Beacon Hill, because the sheriff spent it. Everybody’s hands are clean. Your wallet is not.
Why This Belongs on This Website
It took an Inspector General — not the Legislature, not the press, not any of the officials elected to watch this money — to tell the public that $110 million walked out the door across the Commonwealth with everyone’s tacit consent.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts voters passed a ballot question in 2024 with 72 percent support giving the State Auditor authority to audit the Legislature. Beacon Hill’s response was to fight it in court, all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court, where the matter remains contested in 2026.
Seventy-two percent of us voted to look at the books. They hired lawyers to stop us. Then an Inspector General looked at one narrow slice of those books and found a $110 million hole and $36 million in accounts nobody was watching.
Now ask yourself what is in the parts of the books they are still fighting to keep closed.
Figures above are drawn from the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General’s 2026 reports on sheriffs’ budgeting, as reported by WBUR, GBH, The Provincetown Independent, and Cape News. The Inspector General’s findings describe systemic budgeting failures involving both the sheriffs’ offices and the Legislature; they do not allege criminal conduct by Sheriff Buckley.
Sheriff Donna Buckley: Protecting Everyone Except the People Who Elected Her
Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley has a job description. It is, broadly speaking, to enforce the law, run the county correctional facility, and keep the people of Cape Cod safe. Based on her record, she appears to have interpreted this job description very loosely — particularly the part about “the law.”
Standing With Illegal Aliens Over the Rule of Law
In a move that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Sheriff Buckley publicly announced that her department will not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in their federally mandated mission to remove individuals who are in this country illegally. She stated — with what one can only assume was a straight face — that her staff “will not act as ICE agents.”
Let’s be clear about what this means. When the federal government seeks to deport someone who has entered the country illegally, potentially with a criminal record, and asks the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department for cooperation in holding that individual, Sheriff Buckley’s answer is: No. The Sheriff of Barnstable County has chosen the interests of people who broke federal immigration law over the interests of her own constituents.
She has since doubled down, refusing again to cooperate with ICE even as the current administration has made immigration enforcement a national priority. The voters of Barnstable County should ask themselves: when did they elect a sanctuary city sheriff? Because nobody on the ballot said “vote for me and I’ll shield illegal immigrants from federal law enforcement.”
Taxpayer-Funded Casino Trips
Investigation by the media found that Massachusetts law enforcement agencies — including county sheriff’s departments — used taxpayer-funded credit cards to spend tens of thousands of dollars at casinos across the country. Public agencies using government credit cards at casinos. With your money.
The Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department was among the agencies scrutinized. The next time you hear about a budget shortfall, or cuts to public services, or why the county can’t afford something your community needs — remember the casino receipts.
A Culture of Misconduct at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility
Under Sheriff Buckley’s watch, a female lieutenant at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility was found to have called female subordinates degrading, sexually offensive names in front of male coworkers. The workplace culture in the county jail — the institution Sheriff Buckley is responsible for running — had deteriorated to the point where this behavior was apparently tolerated long enough to become a documented scandal.
A Barnstable County corrections officer was also arraigned for allegedly beating an inmate in his care. The officer entrusted with the safety and custody of detainees allegedly used physical violence against someone under his supervision. When one of your own violates the basic obligation to not assault the people in your custody, that is a management failure — and management in this case means Sheriff Buckley.
The Richard Corey Jr. Hire
Among the most troubling items in the Buckley dossier: the hiring of Richard Corey Jr., a former state trooper who was convicted in Boston Federal Court and sentenced to 3.5 years in federal prison. After his conviction and release, Corey reportedly found employment in the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department. The question that demands an answer is simple: Who approved that hire, and why?
Massachusetts sheriffs need to be held accountable when they hire ex-cops with federal convictions. Accountability, however, requires someone to do the holding — and in one-party Cape Cod, that accountability has been conspicuously absent.
The Road Stop Incident
Audio of a Sheriff Buckley road stop — documented and publicly available on SoundCloud — raises questions about the sheriff’s conduct during a traffic stop. We invite our readers to listen and draw their own conclusions about whether this is the conduct expected of the county’s top law enforcement officer.
The Pattern
A sheriff who refuses to enforce federal immigration law. Taxpayer money spent at casinos. A female lieutenant creating a hostile work environment. An officer arraigned for beating a prisoner. A convicted federal criminal hired to work in the department. An audio recording of a troubling traffic stop.
Each item, taken alone, might be explained away. Taken together, they paint a picture of an institution that has lost its moral compass — and a sheriff who has either lost control of her department, or never had it to begin with.
The people of Cape Cod deserve better. They deserve a sheriff who enforces all the laws — not just the ones that align with her political preferences. They deserve a sheriff who can manage her own department before worrying about managing the border policy of the federal government. They deserve accountability, not excuses.
Sources — check us
We would rather you verify this than believe us. The budget figures come from the Commonwealth’s own Inspector General.
- WBUR — IG calls sheriffs’ budget process ‘opaque, chaotic and deeply flawed’
- GBH — Mass. inspector calls sheriffs budget process ‘deeply flawed’
- Provincetown Independent — State inspector finds sheriff blew past budget by $7.2M ($34.4M appropriated vs $41.6M spent)
- WBUR — IG calls out sheriffs’ ‘wild west’ spending
- GBH — Sheriffs held $36M in accounts outside state oversight
- Cape News — Inspector General’s final report calls for sheriffs’ spending reforms
- Related: Beacon Hill — The Accountability Gap (why the Legislature approved the overspending)
The Inspector General’s findings describe systemic budgeting failures involving both the sheriffs’ offices and the Legislature. They do not allege criminal conduct by Sheriff Buckley. If we have a fact wrong, tell us and we will correct it.