A task force on law-enforcement consolidation continued to discuss hiring a professional auditor as County Attorney Marc Goodman called the Emporia Police Department’s figures “inflated, misleading and a joke.”
Goodman is part of the task force studying whether to merge the police department with the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department. And after looking at costs the police presented last month, he said he had some questions for the department.
“One of the biggest concerns I have with the numbers the police provided is in salaries,” Goodman said Thursday. “I have concerns about whether they’re properly paying the overtime that officers are entitled to according to their classification.”
The police department had a $4.1 million budget in 2006, with 85 percent of its expenses coming from personnel. But Goodman wanted to see if some of the supervisory positions that currently get hourly pay should become salaried employees instead.
“If you’re paying upper-level employees hourly pay and paying them overtime, you obviously have a high number for overtime pay,” he said.
In 2006, the police budgeted $162,706 for overtime and spent $112,000 according to city records.
Task force member Dale Davis has asked before for a cost accountant to go over the figures from the police and sheriff’s departments. He renewed that call Thursday, saying it was the only way to be sure if a merger would save money.
“As well-informed as we are around this table, I don’t think we have the expertise to do an audit and do any of this justice,” Davis said.
“We need to get down to real numbers,” task force chair Marshall Miller agreed.
But task force member Julie Johnson said she still wasn’t sure what to ask the accountants to look for. Another task force member, Phil Winter, pointed out that the group’s decision wouldn’t just be based on dollars and cents.
“You’ve also got this nebulous item in there — is this going to improve or lower the quality of law enforcement?” Winter said.
“And I’m not sure you can answer that question with an accountant,” Johnson said.
“I don’t think you can, either,” Winter said.
The task force also began to look at cost information from the sheriff’s department on Thursday. The department employs 89 people ranging in pay from the newest cooks at the jail ($8.49 an hour) to Sheriff Gary Eichorn ($25.94 an hour). That includes 40 people in the law enforcement side of the department, two in emergency management and the rest in the jail.
This year, the department’s budget is expected to reach nearly $4.6 million. A sheriff’s car runs just shy of $37,000. That’s $11,000 less than a police car, but a big chunk of that is because deputies use a cheaper in-car video system and no mobile data terminals.
Outfitting a deputy costs about $3,840, around $400 less than a police officer. That includes an $805 taser issued to each officer.
Much of the group’s time was spent looking at jail figures. The Lyon County Jail has an average population of nearly 135 prisoners per day. It also earns about $650,000 by housing prisoners from other counties — enough to pay for half of the detention officers at the jail.
Of course, there are some costs.
“When someone goes into the jail, we have to feed them, give them their medication, do their laundry,” Eichorn said.
“Sounds like a high-end hotel,” Davis joked.
“The rooms are not as nice as the Holiday Inn,” Undersheriff Richard Old responded.