Another shoe drops -- What's in store?

     Now the charges are dropped in another high-profile case, a consequence of charges being dropped last week in a murder case.
     Now do you get why politics and ego should never be factors in law enforcement issues?
     Here's the irony: During the hearings in Annapolis several years to consider a bill to keep the commissioners from exercising their constitutional duty to consider someone other than the sheriff being designated the lead law enforcement agency in Carroll County, his most influential advisor at the time was Lt. Robert Keefer, who has since retired. Keefer faced off with me in the corridor outside the Annapolis hearing rooms and said that I had no right to raise questions about Sheriff Ken Tregoning's version of the events that had led to the controversy.
     Such a challenge to the credibility of a sworn law officer could lead to reversals in previously investigated cases, he said. Once one case was overturned, he vigorously argued, there would be a succession of other cases brought back for review.
     My point was that we wanted a full exploration of the options for that very reason; we needed to have a dialog on what agency would best handle investigations of crimes, and I knew the State Police had serious concerns about the capabilities of the county sheriff's department, even while they acknowledged vast improvements in professionalism in recent years.
     The conversation in that corridor echoes today.
     The current board of commissioners bowed to the wishes of the sheriff and a powerful lobby of supporters. The shoes are now dropping.
     These commissioners are "reviewing" other actions of the previous board -- the airport was put on the shelf, costing taxpayers and airport users time and money. The consequences of that is a loss of revenue and staff, contractors will be leaving, revenues will be down, and the airport still needs a new runway.
     Will that decision be reviewed? Is it already under study, in an effort to recoup the opportunity to get federal funding for necessary work? Are they looking for a fall guy to blame for the decision to shelve the plan?
     Same with the waste to energy issue. Months of work by staff and top experts in the field are being "reviewed" by still another committee, this one made up of many of the people who had their own agendas in the original studies.
     And we haven't even started to calculate the consequences of dropping the tax rate and giving up revenues needed to fix roofs and failing heating/air conditioning systems in county schools.
     As I've said before, someone has to pay the bills, and like the auto mechanic on the old billboard ads used to say, "You can pay me a little now, or a lot later."
    

Commissioners and the budget: Cheap gets expensive

     Headlines: The Carroll County Commissioners have a real budget problem, as in not enough money.
     True to their breed, these good conservatives thought they'd impress everyone, particularly the dimmer witted amidst their base constituency, by simple making cuts in programs.
     By golly, they got so full of themselves that they even cut the tax rate before they knew what their budget needs would be for the coming year.
     That's like turning down your paycheck because you want to show off for the boss. Problem is, you still have to pay the rent, car payment, insurance, gasoline, heating bills and groceries.
     Now what.
     First of all, blame a liberal. That always plays well in Duh-land.
     Budget director Ted Zaleski is competent and conscientious, and he bends over backwards to keep politics out of his job and the recommendations he makes to elected officials. He plays the cards he is dealt, and he got a bad hand after the last election: A group of five brand new commissioners -- well, one warmed over retread who didn't learn anything in her first term years ago -- who were committed to cuts but no revenue enhancement, as in increased taxes.
     Robin Frazier was committed to no new taxes in her first term, too, and along with her colleagues and predecessors, dug themselves into such a hole that in 1998, they had to increase taxes by something like 28 cents in a single year.
     Steve Powell, chief of staff and former boss to Zaleski in the budget department, is as frugal a money manager as any you'll find. He and Zaleski have tried to lay out a six-year budget plan that allows those elected to office to plan ahead and lay out a strategy for stability. The idea is to reduce spending where you can, spend wisely where you can't, and make any increases in taxes and fees as gradual and minimal as possible.
     Compare that to the recklessly negligent philosophies of the rabid right, who would not invest a dime in a bucket to bail out a sinking boat.
     The county was in good shape just a couple of years ago. By going on the cheap with a false conservatism, these commissioners will cost us more in the long run, and the long run gets shorter with every passing day.

Sheriff and the commissioners; backstory

     Carroll County's current board of commissioners called Sheriff Ken Tregoning in for a chat about how evidence in a murder case could have been locked up in a safe while the trial was going on.
     A special investigator is looking into the sheriff's claim that a memo about inappropriate procedure regarding the questioning of a witness who turned out to be a defendant was considered an internal issue, and therefor took precedence over the civil rights of the defendants.
     State's Attorney Jerry Barnes called for the investigation after being compelled to drop charges against two defendants in the middle of the trial. Bluntly, he said the mess was the result of a combination of ego and incompetence in the sheriff's department.
     A defense attorney says Barnes' office shares the blame, and so Barnes has asked for a special investigator to look at that, too, confident his office will be found blameless.
     All of this intrigue began before the trial began; meanwhile, the commissioners were giving Sheriff Tregoning what he had lobbied for for years -- designation as the primary law enforcement agency in the county, wresting that status from the Maryland State Police.
     All of this is just another chapter in the continuing saga of various players -- some in public office, some in uniform, and some civilians with one agenda or another -- seeking to win a game of King of the Hill. It's time for some background.
     First of all, a key factor in all of this is the fact that no commissioners, not even these very hands-on incumbents, run the sheriff's department. They have no right to call the sheriff on the carpet. Not like they would a police chief.
     As an independently elected official under the state constitution, the sheriff answers to no one but the voters.
     There are those who say that under old English law, the sheriff is the primary elected official in the land, including the state; no political power, neither by electeds nor by king, can dictate the law to the sheriff. Indeed, in their view, the sheriff can tell the commissioners or the governor how to do their jobs. They are considered by most reasonable people to be extreme in their views, but they are active and noisy.
     The idea is that a sheriff is the direct representative of the people to ensure justice.
So it could be argued that powerful people should not be able to influence his work.
     On the other hand, with literally no civilian oversight, one who is elected sheriff might get a little full of himself, with unhappy consequences regarding justice for the little guy -- apparently what Barnes was referring to with his "ego" remark.
     Tregoning has been one of, if not the best, sheriff in recent Carroll County history.
My own knowledge of local sheriffs goes back to 1963, when a former local football hero, Leroy "Monk" Campbell held the office. His wife, Millie, cooked meals for a handful of inmates, and the sheriff served summons and warrants and ran the jail with the help of three or four deputies.
     Monk Campbell did not speak to the press. If you had a question about why someone was locked up, you had to go to the court records. Monk left office only when he decided not to run again, if my memory serves.
     John Brown was sheriff for awhile, after retiring from a big city police department. He had a flair for publicity, once showing up on the front page of the local paper with handgun drawn and pointed at a purported felon. He once brought that same pistol to the table to a meeting with the commissioners at the time, along with his displeasure at the cuts the county leaders were suggesting to the sheriff's budget. A few county employees were unnerved, but Brown, like Campbell, had his fans.
     Eventually, though, his star faded, and the next interesting personality to hold the office was a retired state cop named Grover "Sam" Sensabaugh. Like Brown, he grew the size of the sheriff's department. Unlike Brown, he did not intimidate people with his weaponry. He had a level of professionalism that earned him a lot of respect, and people got used to the idea of having the sheriff's department do more local policing than it had in the old days. Still, there were some who were wary of a sheriff with too much paramilitary power. The state police remained the primary law enforcement agency.
     I believe it was former state's attorney Tom Hickman, once Jerry Barnes' boss, who pushed the idea of the Resident Trooper program, with the willing help of the commissioners.
    The Resident Trooper program, when it began in the 1970's, allowed the county to pay a portion of the cost of each trooper assigned to the county. The state paid the rest. It was a win-win for everyone but the local sheriff's department. The county got top quality law enforcement at a price it could afford, and the state police got a community policing training model that they used to train -- and promote -- troopers.
     They got money that the sheriff would like to have had -- any sheriff.
     In the beginning, the resident troopers got state cars with Resident Trooper written on the fender. The troopers were supposed to live in the general community they patrolled. They answered to the state police barrack commander.
     The rancor between top brass in the sheriff's department at brass at the state police barrack ebbed and flowed, depending on the budget allotments and the personalities in place. Most of the uniformed deputies and officers were less concerned about who was designated top cop. They had jobs to do, they cooperated, mostly, or at least as much as their superiors allowed -- or insisted, depending.
     In public, there was no problem between the agencies. In private -- in reality -- there was an ongoing, deep-seated determination by each agency to retain top cop status.
     It was about funding, for one thing. It was about career development, professional status, and -- some say it was a combination of vindictive intent and ego. In any case, the games of one-up-manship continued behind the scenes.
     As Julia Gouge, Perry Jones, and I settled into working as a new board of commissioners, the sheriff increased his personal lobbying to be designated the primary law agency in the county. He visited each commissioner individually, making his case in private meetings.
     The state police, too, came visiting, both in public and private, one-on-one meetings with each commissioner. The top state cop under Gov. Robert Ehrlich pushed for retention of the resident trooper program and the continuing designation of the state police as the primary enforcement agency. When a new governor took over, and a new state police superintendent put in place, he, too, came calling for private visits, and was more insistent that the state police remain the designated enforcement leader.
     One thing both superintendents stressed was their concern about the handling of evidence in, say, a murder case. Both were clearly skeptical of the ability of the sheriff's office to meet the highest standards.
     Under both administrations, we got mixed signals as to how long the resident trooper program could continue, especially as they raised the amount the county was paying toward the resident trooper program in Carroll County.
     The program, which started with the county paying less than half the cost of a uniformed officer, was now costing us nearly 130 percent, as we were being billed for administrative expenses. The state virtually dictated the terms of the contracts.
     There was underlying tension between the agencies, a few cases of missed communications and mistakes in responses. Obviously, policing procedures could be improved, but there was deadlock, and the sheriff talked publicly of cooperation, but privately insisted he was entitled to the honored status he sought.
     He apparently had the support of Perry Jones. Julia was adamantly opposed to giving the sheriff that designation. I was primarily interested in ending the competition between the sheriff and the state police. Also, I felt we needed to heed the points made by the sheriff that training and staffing his department was less expensive than continuing to meet the costs dictated by the state police.
     Eventually, I came to believe we needed to form a study group that would independently examine all the options -- retain the status quo, switch over to the sheriff and end the resident trooper program, or perhaps split the sheriff's growing roster into two departments -- the traditional sheriff, plus a county police force, filled with hires from the sheriff's improved, better trained officers.
     In candor, I told the sheriff that I had a problem with the power that could be wielded by a sheriff with populist support; laws might be interpreted, more than enforced, by one whose power was based on popularity, rather than due process. Besides, I pointed out: He had shown competent leadership, but if the past was a predictor of the future, the next person to hold the office should have some restraints.
    The sheriff told me that he would support a study and open, public dialog and processes to determine the best way forward.
     There is a time, between the formation of an idea and its possibilities to the actual initiation of a formal proposal, that word gets out that something is under consideration.
It's a dangerous time for good intentions, because rumors and leaks and old grudges can create an us-versus-them alignment before the real facts can be put on the table for consideration. Those who play games use the undercurrents of public opinion, misrepresentations and enmities to check the prevailing winds, and determine how to play the next moves.
     When it was time to meet as a board of commissioners to set such a process in place, the sheriff changed direction. He said the commissioners' actions were a surprise to him. He said the commissioners were not really opening a dialog, but rather, shoving changes down the throats of the people.
      The controversy that ensued brought out populist support from sheriffs' associations, anti- state police elements, constitutionalists who agreed that the sheriff was as the Sheriff of Nottingham -- the supreme elected official of the land. Aspirants to political office spoke up at public meetings and there was a lot of "We the People" talk about over-reaching politicians in general and these commissioners in particular.
     The sheriff appeared before the county delegation asking for legislation to preclude Carroll County's commissioners from changing the form of law enforcement in this county, even though the state constitution clearly stated that county officials had the right to create a county police force. The delegation happily went along with the idea.
     The lawmakers in Annapolis struggled with changing the constitution, but got over it by recognizing a time-honored tool to perpetuate vote swapping; "local courtesy." They kept the constitutional assertion that every county could choose its own form of policing -- with the exception of Carroll County. Then, when it was pointed out that such a discrimination was probably not constitutional, either, they amended it to expire when that current board of commissioners' terms expired.
     One of the sheriff's staunchest political allies at the time told me that he was disappointed at the way things turned out. Ego, he said, apparently had trumped good policy.
     Competition between agencies can erode good practices, but the last thing you want is a law enforcement boss with absolute power, and little or no civilian oversight or accountability after election day.
     Someone like that might feel justified in stomping on constitutional rights of defendants, or fouling evidence in the courts.  
    
   
   

Tales of two sheriffs

     Sheriffs have been in the news.
     In Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, darling of the law and order folks for putting his inmates in pink underwear and housing them in tents in the Arizona extremes of blistering heat and freeze locker cold, played to the media by announcing he would make an announcement about an investigation into President Obama's birth certificate.
     The actual announcement was a bit of a dud. He used a discredited report, full of half-truths and outright false premises, to conclude that there was "reason to believe" that the birth certificate "might" be fraudulent. The assertions didn't hold water a year ago, but that doesn't bother a populist sheriff/politician who is savvy enough to know there will always be a hard core base of people who will never believe facts, but cling forever to what they want to believe. He had another moment in the spotlight, which was all he wanted.
     Here at home, we read the local papers as a murder case in the local court unraveled because of allegations of misconduct by members of the county sheriff's department, including the charge by the defense that a defendant had been questioned by Sheriff's investigators even after she said she wanted an attorney.
     Charges were dismissed, the case thrown out of court. A respected major, Nick Plazio, was accused of ordering an underling to continue the questioning, and the major denied it. The state's attorney produced a memo, eventually, showing that the alleged impropriety had been called to the attention of the sheriff, but that the sheriff decided to put the memo in the safe and not disclose the allegation to the defense attorney because it was then a part of an internal departmental investigation.
     The state's attorney isn't buying it, and neither, apparently, is the judge.
     So, Who Struck John? Did the major violate the rules of interrogation, or was it an example of internal turmoil in the department?
     The major says he did not give the order. So, did it come from higher up? Is the major being thrown under the bus to save face for the sheriff? It's something that happens in quasi-military organizations; ask any person who ever served in the military. Or ask any cop, or career professional firefighter. Little guys get sacrificed for the career or political aspirations of senior officers all the time.
     We may not ever know. But the top guy bears the burden when something hits the fan, unless, of course, the top guy is a popularly elected official. The only civilian oversight is at election time, which is always, it seems, several years down the road.
     Meanwhile, the consequences of a bad actor are very real, and very now.

It will take more than two to equal one in this case

     So Larry Twele reads the dregs in the bottom of the teacup and wisely leaves the Carroll County Economic Development job to take a similar position in Howard County. Twele, who replaced then and again Jack Lyburn, had the respect of economic thinkers all over Maryland and beyond, is better for the experience in Carroll County, which he left in better shape than he found it.
    The county was well served while he was here. He laid the groundwork for most of the things that the current commissioners are taking credit for, and I said when he left that Carroll County would have a hard time finding someone with decent credentials to replace him. I said the same thing about the Department of Planning when Steve Horn left.
     People who value their own credibility in economic development and in planning are particular about who they work for.
     The county leaders have hired two to replace Twele, but it will take more than these two to equal the one that they lost. You know you have a problem when the commissioners spin the previously undisclosed bankruptcy of one of the new hires as fortuitous, because he knows what that feels like.
     Hey, in these hard times, it happens. But we're supposed to think it's wonderful?
    When I had no other choices as a young homeowner, I had to buy retreads for my car, but I never tried to convince anyone, not even myself, that they were as good as a brand new set of Goodyears.