Posturing or Progress?

Dire predictions and grandstanding are, regrettably, a familiar part of the budgetary process. Nowhere is this more evident than in the annual feuds between the county Board of Supervisors and Sheriff John Duffy.

Duffy has a well-deserved reputation for being a master at budget gamesmanship, and he fights loud and hard for his department. He yields little to the supervisors, who control how much money the Sheriff’s Department gets but not how it is spent. Their growing frustration with this system, which requires them to put blind trust in the sheriff at a time when other budgets are getting closer scrutiny, is apparent.

This year, as the supervisors faced significant cuts, the budget hearings were exceptionally bitter. Duffy claimed that the board’s misplaced priorities would force him to close substations, eliminate ambulance service in some areas and reassign narcotics and child-abuse personnel.

But the grandstanding didn’t stop there. Supervisor George Bailey is now suggesting sweeping changes in the county’s law enforcement system. He has proposed that a special committee study the idea of setting up a corrections department, headed by a board appointee, to run the county’s jails, which are now managed by the elected sheriff. Bailey also suggested that cities might be able to police some unincorporated areas more efficiently than the sheriff does.

Both proposals would dramatically diminish Duffy’s authority, although Bailey says the impetus for them is the need for more economical ways to handle the county’s changing law enforcement demands.

Bailey’s idea is radical and may prove impractical or politically impossible. But a special committee, one broad enough to rise above the immediate acrimony, makes some sense.

Law enforcement needs in the county are changing. More communities are incorporating and the county’s increasingly urban nature has taxed many services.

Also, as the county embarks on the massive jail construction program approved in June by the voters to relieve the severe overcrowding, this is an appropriate time for a fresh look at jail operations. The idea of staffing the jails with lower-paid correctional officers instead of deputies is one worthy of serious study.

Bailey’s proposal may be more grandstanding, but it might produce some light as well as heat.