Criticism continues over sheriff’s budget

Whitman County commissioners drew fresh fire Monday – hearing criticism of their decision to hold Sheriff Brett Myers’ 2010 budget to what he said is a bare bones level.

Uniontown resident Marilyn Burg wrote a letter critical of the decision, and Doug Harris, a Seattle policeman and Colfax native, addressed commissioners during Monday morning’s regular meeting.

The 2010 budget which commissioners approved last month gave the sheriff $2,904,537 – more than $43,000 less than Myers said he needed.

At the time it was passed, Myers said it was a shoestring budget that may force him to lay off a deputy.

Both Harris and Burg criticized commissioners for holding the sheriff’s purse strings so tightly.

“His budget should have been the first thing you looked at and approved,” said Harris.

“Sheriff Myers has been doing a very admirable job of providing good coverage for the county, and I do not see any examples of unnecessary spending in his department,” wrote Burg.

Burg said she saw no logical reasoning for holding the sheriff to such a tight line. She pointed out the first deputy that would be laid off would Dep. Brian Keller.

Keller was the last deputy hired onto Myers’ force.

Burg, a rural Uniontown resident, noted Keller lives in her area.

It has been a long time since southeast Whitman County has had a deputy living in the area, she noted, and Keller’s presence has “made a noticeable difference.”

Commissioner Pat O’Neill stood by his decision.

O’Neill said private business has had to deal with reduced staff because of the recession and all county departments had to slice the fat out of their budgets to meet the budget goal.

Even with those cuts, the county opened 2010 in the red, planning to tap operating cash to balance revenue and spending.

“The county’s been very conservative the last three or four years, and that’s let us withstand this current situation,” said O’Neill.

He noted he told the sheriff at the time commissioners would consider amending his budget to prevent a lay-off.

“If you know that money’s there…” Harris told commissioners. “… fully fund it so the guy that’s going to get laid off doesn’t have to worry about it.”

Harris has served 24 years with the Seattle Police Department. He attended Monday’s meeting to give commissioners what he called “a view of how things are playing outside of Whitman County.”

He pointed to an article in the Statesman-Examiner of Colville where a Stevens County commissioner said he chose not to cut the budget for that sheriff because he saw public safety as a paramount duty of government.

“It’s your responsibility as commissioners to provide public safety at staffing levels that will keep the public safe,” said Harris.

“It’s our responsibility to have a balanced budget,” Commissioner Greg Partch told Harris.

Throughout the budget process, Partch held the sheriff to a tight bottom line.

He said he did so because deputies are scheduled to receive pay raises of between four and nine percent this year under a contract signed by the county and the deputies’ guild in 2007. Partch criticized deputies for not offering to concede some of that raise to save a fellow deputy’s job.

Harris said it was not the deputies’ place to offer to give up their raises.

“If you want the concessions, you need to come to them and ask,” he said.

Harris noted Seattle police received six percent pay raises this year while the city laid off people in other departments and forced more employees to take ten unpaid days of leave this year.

He said other Whitman County departments could have taken bigger cuts to fund the sheriff at his requested level.

“I can wait for a permit,” he said. “Or if you have to close a park for a year, I can deal with that.”