I’m still a tad dumbstruck by the flap surrounding Benton County Sheriff Kelley Cradduck caused by the inadequate 2013 budget inherited from his predecessor.
My fascination isn’t that Cradduck (in his quest to lift a public office to the top rung of 21st Century law enforcement) has received $300,000 in overtime pay for employees. It also doesn’t lie in Cradduck’s taking on many more and far larger cases than before in that office.
I’m impressed Cradduck hit the ground at a sprint (as he’d promised) and in the process somehow found ways to return darned near as much to county coffers as what his office has spent.
For that nifty trick alone, I’d think most folks who aren’t politically opposed to this sheriff would be grateful and impressed.
Cradduck says he notified the county’s comptroller last summer that, because of two big federal investigations, his office would need to either rearrange funds in its budget or ask the Quorum Court for more money upfront to cover related overtime expenses. He said the comptroller told him he should wait to discuss that need until after the budgeting process for the year had ended, which is exactly what he did.
Since Quorum Court members receive monthly copies of the county’s financials, Cradduck said he assumed they had been kept abreast of the necessary changes in the office’s needs. But apparently the changes were overlooked because the court’s monthly reports are explained in percentages rather than specifics. The sheriff said it’s simply incorrect for anyone to say the court wasn’t aware of the budgetary changes.
Perhaps the court (whose primary responsibility is managing the county’s money) might be best served by reforming the way its members receive financial information.
Cradduck went on to explain that much of these overtime dollars paid will be returned to the county’s general fund at the conclusion of those two larger federal cases his Benton County investigators have been involved in this year. And that, he added, doesn’t include additional significant amounts of money and vehicles they’ve seized. He said that over $100,000 already has been paid back to the county, with more to come. He said he can understand how some might misunderstand that, since those monies go back to the general fund rather than his department’s overtime budget, so it could wrongly be perceived that those dollars aren’t being returned to the county.
The sheriff said he feels it’s important for citizens of Benton County to realize that some deputies work the so-called STEP grant program for seat-belt enforcement, as do other larger law enforcement agencies nationwide. That federal grant allows for compensation that initially comes from the sheriff’s overtime budget, yet is repaid to the county’s general fund.
Then there’s his detective assigned to the Drug Enforcement Agency task force; up to $15,000 a year of that officer’s overtime is repaid to the county by the federal government. And narcotics officers from any law enforcement agency naturally find themselves working overtime because of the nature of their work. Nor is overtime abnormal for any narcotics or undercover officer.
Cradduck said his narcotics officers have been nonstop busy on behalf of Benton County. Already this year 500 narcotics investigations have seized some $83,000 for the county, compared with 27 investigations that seized $10,000 under his predecessor in all of 2012. The office has seized 83 vehicles in 2013, compared with four in 2012. And he said the amount of methamphetamine that deputies have removed from the streets this year has increased by 985 percent over last year.
He told me he’s tried his best to work within the unrealistic budget he inherited and accomplish more than even he thought he could on that amount. He said he’s learned a lot this first year and plans to smooth out remaining rough spots in communication while continuing to set the highest expectations within his department.
“I make my fair share of mistakes, but try hard not to repeat them and I do own them when I do,” he said. “I’m trying hard to do a good job for the people who elected me and the people who work for me. Things overall are actually doing very well here.The Quorum Court has acknowledged as much and tells me how I provide them far more information than my predecessor.”
Any sheriff worth his badge always will strive for the highest level of professionalism and honor in the department. But I see that it can be a mighty frustrating job, especially when good-ol’-boy political agendas are constantly at work. More than that, it’s got to be most painful when an idealistic and energized sheriff employs quality deputies, sends them to law enforcement academies for first-class training, places full trust in their abilities, then sees them depart for greener pastures, such as Wal-Mart, and much higher salaries.
That’s just what happened to Cradduck the other day when two members of his command staff gave their notices for that very reason. This, for me anyway, is all the more reason for the Quorum Court to respond to the sheriff in a way that supports all the documented good things he is doing while still trying to accomplish worthy goals, not for himself, but for Benton County.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 12/03/2013