L&T OPINION
Local citizen Carolyn Huddleston has been doing the work necessary to inform the public about Seward County funding, and she deserve a big thank you from all of us.
Thanks to her research, it was discovered that previous bonuses were approved without any official votes, which led to changes on the Seward County Commission.
She has now discovered that raises to the Cimarron Basin Community Corrections have recently taken place without any approval of the CBCC oversight board or the Seward County Commission.
Unlike the previous transgression of bonuses with unauthorized signatures, these pay hikes occurred without any signatures whatsoever.
Huddleston requested records to show when these pay hikes were approved, but no records exist to validate the increases.
That means they were approved for payment from within Seward County administration, not elected officials or boards.
Similar organizations have made requests in comparable counties where similar corrections organizations exist, and in those cases their county commissioners turned the increases down.
Why?
Even though these corrections organizations are funded by state funds rather than local funds, they are required to keep the level of funding in line with other comparable county positions.
That does not seem to be the case.
Corrections is basically probation services for higher-end offenders and some drug related or multiple DUI-related offenders.
A difficult job, for sure.
But it is no walk in the park to be the officers who deal with criminals before the incarceration or during it, but that’s what the Seward County Sheriff’s Department does every day.
According to Huddleston, the only education required to be an Intense Supervisor Officer — overseeing the probation of offenders short of going to prison — is a high school diploma.
Law enforcement officers, on the other hand, have to attend training academies and usually have an associate’s degree or higher in Criminal Justice.
But the pays do not align, especially having the director, who oversee three ISO officers, earning more than $20,000 per year more than the Seward County Sheriff, the top law enforcement officer in Seward County.
The rules of the corrections program requires salaries to be aligned, but this is grossly askew.
And the problem it creates is to extract more money from the taxpayers in what appears to be an underpaid sheriff. Thats is probably true, but it is also true that the public contribution of overseeing three employees who provide probationary-style duties is extremely overpaid.
When other counties faced similar raise requests, they required the pay of the corrections staff to align with the county’s pay structure.
That isn’t happening here, and it raises more questions about the management of Seward County and the lack of fiscal oversight needed from a Chief Financial Officer.
The Seward County Commission should take note of this inequity, but more importantly it should work to resolve the structural deficiencies that consistently lead to similar issues.
