Riverside County must strip its sheriff of coroner duties and build a standalone medical examiner's office by July 1, 2027, under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wednesday, Sept. 30.

Senate Bill 1379, authored by state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, requires the Board of Supervisors to appoint a county medical examiner. That person must be a licensed physician specializing in pathology.

The law also requires the county to post an initial incident report on its website within 24 hours of any in-custody death and a preliminary report within 72 hours. The county must notify the deceased's next of kin within 72 hours of determining the cause of death.

Sheriff Chad Bianco called the move politically motivated.

"Lies, identity politics, and a dysfunctional state government have now forced this upon us," Bianco told Patch. He said the Board of Supervisors was right to reject the separation because it was not in residents' best interest. Bianco, who ran as a Republican for governor earlier in 2026, said he would work with county partners to meet the deadline.

County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen called the nine-month timeline a "significant undertaking" and warned of costs the state will not cover. No dollar estimate for the transition has been made public.

Van Wagenen said the county will coordinate with the Sheriff's Department, employees and labor partners to keep services running during the changeover, according to the Riverside Record.

The two offices have been combined since the late 1990s, when the Board of Supervisors voted to merge them. In 2024, the board voted unanimously against separating them after county staff raised concerns about higher costs and duplicated work, KESQ reported.

Supporters of the split point to Riverside County's jail-death record. According to a Care First California report cited in Cervantes' office news release, 226 people died in custody in Riverside County jails between 2011 and 2022.

The county accounted for roughly 10 percent of all in-custody deaths statewide during that span despite holding about 6 percent of California's population. Between 2014 and 2024, those deaths resulted in nearly $100 million in settlements paid by county taxpayers, according to Cervantes' office.

In August, a federal jury found Sheriff's Department personnel liable in an inmate's fentanyl death and awarded the family $13.5 million in damages, according to KESQ. The California Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the county's jails after a record 19 in-custody deaths in 2022. That investigation remains underway, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Beaumont resident Lisa Matus, whose son Richard died in Sheriff's Department custody, testified before the state Senate Public Safety Committee on April 21 in support of the bill. "Families in Riverside County wait over a year for autopsy reports, only to later learn the truth does not match what they were initially told," Matus told the committee, according to the Chronicle.

Forty-eight of California's 58 counties still combine their sheriff and coroner offices. The Board of Supervisors has not announced an implementation timeline beyond the July 1, 2027, statutory deadline.