More than 830 employees ---- including 159 in the field of public safety ---- have taken Riverside County up on its offer to retire early, and a new report says the move will save nearly $16 million this year at a time when the county is struggling to cope with plummeting tax revenue.

The savings will grow to $21.2 million for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which starts July 1, according to the report.

But there will be a cost.

To entice employees to leave early, the county offered to give them credit for two years of additional service, which boosts the amount of retirement pay they'll receive. In the 2011-12 fiscal year, the county will have to start making good on its promise to boost retirement benefits for those who took the "golden handshake," triggering $2.3 million in additional costs.

Besides the financial cost of the early retirement, there is also a human cost in having droves of seasoned workers depart.

The early retirement offer to public safety employees closed Oct. 13, and 56 percent of the 284 workers eligible for the golden handshake accepted, the report said.

Sheriff Stanley Sniff said 102 of the safety workers were in his department. Coupled with eight others who took regularly scheduled retirements, one of the state's largest police agencies with nearly 4,000 sworn officers and staff members lost 110 people.

"This hurts the department because a lot of very skilled people left prematurely," Sniff said in a telephone interview Monday. "It's not a crippling blow, but it's a severe blow. The real question, however, is, what's laying around the corner?"

Sometime in the current fiscal year, he said, the department must begin filling some of its several hundred vacancies.

For now, Jim Cunningham, executive director for the Riverside Sheriff's Association, which accounted for nearly 70 percent of the public safety retirements, said remaining deputies aren't worried that the shrinking size of the force will place them in danger on the street.

"We have every confidence that the sheriff is going to be able to move manpower around so that it won't be a safety issue for our members," Cunningham said.

And he said there is a positive side: Younger deputies have more opportunity now for advancement.

The update on the county's early retirement program is scheduled to be delivered to the Board of Supervisors as part of a larger first-quarter budget report at its meeting Tuesday. The board meets at 9 a.m. on the first floor of the county administrative center, 4080 Lemon St., Riverside.

The savings from the early retirements is less than the $33 million a year County Finance Director Paul McDonnell estimated last spring, when county officials prepared to adopt a $680 million budget and discussed extending the offer to public safety employees.

Still, McDonnell said on Monday, "It's working."

He said the savings is giving the county budget breathing room at a time when shrinking state funding and falling property and sales taxes have triggered furloughs and steep cuts.

"People leave and you're not paying them, and that generates savings," he said.

McDonnell said the gain will be offset to some degree by the up-front costs associated with paying retiring employees their accumulated vacation time and sick leave, and the fast-approaching cost associated with the increase in retirement benefits.

According to the county report, 677 employees from a wide range of departments outside public safety accepted a golden handshake offer in 2008, and that is saving the county $12.7 million a year.

The retirement of 159 public safety employees this fall will add $8.5 million to that annual savings next year, the report said. But because of the need to pay retirees for all the unused vacation time and sick leave they have accumulated, the public safety savings this year will amount to just $3.2 million.

"We're still ahead by doing it, as long as we keep the positions (the new retirees held down) vacant," McDonnell said. "And, quite frankly, we're not in the hiring mode. Certainly in the short term we're going to end up saving money."

However, a taxpayer watchdog group says the county's program is a foolish move that will yield marginal savings.

"They are trying to encourage high-income, late-career employees to retire early," Marcia Fritz, president for the Sacramento-based California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, said in a telephone interview Monday. "And they're thinking they're going to save a lot of payroll cost that way."

But Fritz said that in the long run county taxpayers will pay more.

She said her group estimates that, on average, employees for counties and cities across California earn $52,000 extra during retirement for every year of additional credit they receive through a golden handshake.

"This is a very temporary fix," Fritz said.

Call staff writer Dave Downey at 951-676-4315, ext. 2623.