Duffy Targeted in Personnel Policy Change

Putting Sheriff John Duffy on a shorter leash--one that may be shortened more next week--the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a policy that will require Duffy to give them advance notice of any major personnel shifts within his department, as well as quarterly reports on key services.

By a unanimous vote, the supervisors adopted a policy requiring Duffy and other elected department heads to provide the board with advance written notification of any plans to reallocate five or more positions for at least three months.

Seeking to expand its budgetary authority, the board next week is expected to approve an even stricter measure under which Duffy and the county’s other elected officials would need to obtain board approval for such personnel shifts. Supervisor Susan Golding noted that the board’s action Tuesday moved in that direction by requiring board approval of so-called “sub-object” budget changes in which funding from one area is shifted to another.

“If a department head asks for funding for a particular purpose and we give it to him, it should be spent on that and not on something else,” Golding said. “In the past, all we could do was complain when that happened. It’s only right that we should have a chance to approve or disapprove major budget changes.”

Duffy Primary Target

Although the prior-notice and approval proposals apply to all elected department heads--including the district attorney, assessor, recorder, clerk, treasurer and judges--supervisors made it clear that Duffy is the primary target of both guidelines, which board members argue will give them better budgetary oversight.

“We need something like this because we haven’t exactly developed a spirit of trust with some of our elected officials due to their past actions,” Supervisor George Bailey said, adding that Duffy has been “one of the biggest problems . . . in that area.”

Tuesday’s action represents the latest chapter in a longtime dispute between the board and Duffy over where the supervisors’ budgetary discretion ends and his management responsibilities begin in the operation of the Sheriff’s Department.

In his annual budget showdowns with the board, Duffy has consistently hewed to the same line: that the board has the right to set the budget for his department, but not to tell him how to specifically spend that money.

While the supervisors chafed under that restriction, arguing that it weakened their role as the county’s chief policy-setters, they did not seriously challenge Duffy’s assertion of managerial prerogative--until this year.

County administrators acknowledged that the genesis of the new policy requiring prior notice of “significant” personnel shifts was the board’s longstanding complaint that Duffy’s past internal personnel moves sometimes undermined particular law enforcement programs that the supervisors had identified as budget priorities.

Last year, for example, members of the sheriff’s child-abuse unit--a program for which Duffy made an impassioned budget request--were assigned by the sheriff to handle other duties as well as child-abuse cases.

“I hope this sends a very clear message that, when the board sets budget or program priorities, they should be complied with, not changed or ignored,” Supervisor Brian Bilbray said. “Yes, this is a shortening of the leash. But it’s still not as short as some people would like to see it.”

Sgt. Bob Takeshta, a spokesman for Duffy, said the sheriff would reserve judgment on the new policy until he had more time to study it. However, noting that the Sheriff’s Department frequently reallocates manpower from one area to another, Takeshta added: “On the surface, this looks like a very, very inflexible policy as far as our department is concerned. If we’d be required to provide written notice anytime we make a change, I don’t think that’s going to be very realistic.”

Even Stricter Measure

If the department has concerns over the prior-notice requirement, its top officials may well be apoplectic over the item on next week’s board agenda.

Arguing that Tuesday’s action is insufficient to address the board’s concern over being shut out of crucial departmental policy decisions, Bailey favors an even stricter measure under which Duffy and other elected officials would be required not simply to provide advance notice, but to obtain the board’s approval of major personnel changes.

Describing his proposal as the “equivalent of a line-item veto,” Bailey dismissed the prior-notice measure as “only a small first step” in that direction. Simply requiring advance notice of major personnel shifts, he argued, would not give the board a stronger hand in shaping those decisions.

“The sheriff . . . could still thumb his nose at us,” Bailey said. “These reports wouldn’t change that.”

David Janssen, the county’s assistant chief administrative officer, conceded that the prior-notice requirement would do little to increase the supervisors’ role in the Sheriff’s Department’s internal budgetary decisions other than to give them an opportunity to try to galvanize public opinion.

“They might be able to say, for example, that the sheriff wants to move people from the child-abuse unit to jails, and we think that’s a lousy idea,” Janssen said. “But it would not give them any authority to prevent that from happening.”

The proposal requiring advance approval of personnel changes, however, would significantly expand the board’s involvement in the management of individual departments.

Currently, the only budgetary limitation the board can impose on Duffy or any other elected department head is a broad one requiring that funds be spent within one of four general areas: salaries, services, fixed assets and capital improvements.

But if the board’s approval becomes necessary for “sub-object” budget changes, the supervisors would be in a position to share--perhaps even dictate--those and other decisions.

“It’s not the board’s intent to make it impossible for department heads to manage,” said David Janssen, the county’s assistant chief administrative officer. “But, without crippling management, the board wants to be assured that when they approve an expenditure for a specific program that it’s going to be spent for that program.”