Sheriff separate from commissioners
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October 16, 2012 |
In reference to the "Sheriff
should report."
Remember your history/government classes? The
chief of police is under the direction of the
city council and not elected. The sheriff is
separate from the county commissioners and does
not need to report to them. Remember judicial,
legislative and executive branches? The sheriff
is executive branch. The commissioners are
legislative and the judges are judicial. This is
the basis of our constitution that no group can
run another and they keep checks and balances on
each other.
I agree it would be easy to do. Swift Justice
has been part of the sheriff's office for at
least 12 years when I worked in Boundary County.
But I don't think we want a situation where the
commissioners run the law enforcement in the
county or even appear to run the sheriff's
office. The commissioners do hold the purse
strings as they do for every other county
entity. The sheriff does become accountable for
his budget and there are hearings by the
commissioners during budget times where the
commission hears reports from the sheriff. I
don't believe the sheriff's budget has gone over
budget since before I started to work there in
1996.
A good idea would be to have the sheriff report
to the people with facts and numbers but
reporting to the commissioners starts to show
that the Commissioners run the Sheriff's Office
when the commissioners should not run the
sheriff's office.
As for the ambulance service reports should
happen because it is under the commission's
right hand.
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Don Alt
Bonners Ferry |
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