The lawsuit was filed in 2007. The racial profiling ruling came in 2013. Thirteen years later, Maricopa County is still under federal court oversight in Ortega Melendres, and county leaders have spent the last year selling one number to explain why that has to end: $353 million.
That is the figure the Board of Supervisors put out in July 2025, when then-Chairman Thomas Galvin said the case and its compliance orders would cost taxpayers $353 million by the end of 2026. "The time has come to put an end to this costly and unnecessary judicial oversight," Galvin said.
Three months later, a court-ordered audit of the Sheriff's Office's own books said something the county still has not reckoned with in public: about $163 million of what MCSO billed to Melendres, roughly 72% of the costs it reported, did not belong there.
What the audit found
The review was ordered by U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow after MCSO's receipts kept coming back as lumps labeled "MCSO operational costs." Budget analysts chosen by the court's monitor, Robert Warshaw, went through the records. Their report was filed Oct. 8, 2025.
MCSO had billed the county $226 million for Melendres compliance from February 2014 to late September 2024. The analysts found more than $163 million of it was misattributed or "improperly prorated," including $144.4 million in personnel costs, KTAR reported. On average, 70% of the positions paid from compliance money were inappropriately assigned or only partly related to compliance, according to KJZZ.
Phoenix New Times, KJZZ and the ACLU of Arizona listed a $11,805 golf cart, $1.3 million for 42 vehicles the orders did not require, $1.5 million in office renovations, $2.8 million in surplus body camera licenses, cable TV subscriptions, car washes, mounted patrol training and travel to buy horses. The report called the claim that this spending was court-directed "a gross misrepresentation."
Put the county's headline next to the audit and the problem is plain: the flagged $163 million alone is nearly half of the $353 million the county keeps quoting. The periods are not identical, and the county's total also counts monitor fees and legal bills the audit did not examine. But the biggest slice of the county's number is MCSO's compliance spending, and that is the slice the auditors gutted.
Why the number mattered to the county
There is a second reason the attribution matters. Arizona's constitution caps county spending, and costs of complying with court orders fall outside that cap. Every dollar parked in the Melendres column was a dollar that did not count against the limit.
The report said the county may have broken its constitutional spending limit in fiscal 2023, 2024 or 2025, KTAR reported. Phoenix New Times reported the analysts found the county "exceeded the State constitutional expenditure limit by over $13 million" in fiscal 2022. The Attorney General's Office declined to tell New Times what, if anything, it would do.
The ACLU of Arizona did not leave it open. "The Sheriff's Office and complicit County politicians cooked the books in Ortega Melendres," said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta of the national ACLU.
Compliance went the other way
While the county argued the agency was reformed, the monitor's June 2026 quarterly report said MCSO had dropped in overall compliance, ABC15 reported. The monitor described "a disturbing pattern of behaviors, policy violations, court violations, statutory violations, and a host of ethical breaches," KJZZ reported, and raised concerns about how the current leadership handles internal affairs cases.
On Sept. 10, 2026, Snow denied the county's bid to end oversight, finding MCSO had not shown the goals of his orders were met or that safeguards existed to stop a return to old practices. He gave both sides 60 days to propose changes, leaving room to trim the orders. On Oct. 13, the county filed notice of appeal to the 9th Circuit, Axios Phoenix reported.
The other side
The county and MCSO have a real case, and they make it hard. Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, who took office in January 2025, notes the audit started more than a year before he did, and the overbilling it describes spans four sheriffs. He says the report's tally left out about $34 million in monitor and past legal costs and that the monitor's financial expert "didn't even know how to read the spreadsheet." Galvin said he stood by MCSO's budget numbers and questioned the analyst's credentials: "We have 650,000 licensed CPAs in the United States of America."
On compliance, MCSO points to an internal affairs backlog cut from more than 2,100 cases to about 256 as of July 2026 and 156 provisions in full and effective compliance, per KTAR. The U.S. Justice Department backed ending the oversight. The Sheriff's Office says it has "implemented durable remedies for violations that occurred 19 years and three administrations ago." Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko said the court has kept "an unelected and unaccountable federal monitor" over the agency.
Those are fair points. None of them explains a golf cart.
The questions
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (Thomas Galvin, Kate Brophy McGee):
Does the board still stand behind the $353 million figure? Has it been revised since the October 2025 audit?
How much of that total is MCSO compliance spending, and how much of that was in the audit's flagged $163 million?
Did the county exceed its constitutional spending limit in fiscal 2022 or any later year? Has it recalculated?
Has the county moved any costs out of the Melendres fund since the audit?
Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (Sheriff Jerry Sheridan):
Which of the audit's specific findings does MCSO dispute, line by line?
Why were vehicles, a golf cart and horse-related travel charged to Melendres?
What changed before the June 2026 monitor report to drive overall compliance down?
ACLU of Arizona:
Have plaintiffs asked any state agency to review the spending-limit findings, and with what result?
Which provisions would plaintiffs agree to drop under Snow's 60-day process?
This look back was reported from public records and reporting through Oct. 20, 2026, including court filings described by KTAR, KJZZ, Phoenix New Times, Axios Phoenix, AZFamily and county and ACLU of Arizona press releases. We have not independently obtained the full audit ledger, and the county's cost total and the audit cover different periods. We are looking for the audit's supporting spreadsheets, the county's spending-limit calculations for fiscal 2022 through 2026, and anyone who worked MCSO or county budgets during those years. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the ACLU of Arizona were asked for comment; responses will be added with a dated update. Tips: [email protected]. Corrections: [email protected].
Update Oct. 21, 2026: The ACLU of Arizona's communications director, Amanda Mollindo, said plaintiffs have not asked any state agency to review the audit's spending-limit findings, and that "The audit report is strong and well supported." On changes to the orders, she said the parties are working together to determine whether any modifications are warranted under the court's Rule 60 decision.