Kane County Sheriff's race: Pat Perez says if elected no more county cars as perks for Sheriff's Office employees
Saw Pat Perez speak this afternoon at a reception at a supporter's home. Perez said there were at least a dozen County ownered cars used by Sheriff's Office employees as perks.
These are civilian cars, not squads, mostly Chevy Luminas, and the employees are allowed 24 x 7 use of the cars, including filling them up with the county's gas and covered by the county's insurance. Perez said one employee used his car to attend a Sox's game and got a speeding ticket coming home on I-88 with it. Perez said if elected, he'll stop this perk. Something he doesn't believe Kevin Williams will do.
I have no idea if this is commonly done in County's in Illinois. I can understand the uniform guys taking the squads home but this just looks like a hefty perk.
Perez also said mid-level supervisors are pushing to join a union now; so the only non-union person left in the office will be the Sheriff himself. Perez wants to reduce the number of supervisors and increase the number of people in the field.
He also said he wanted to implement ongoing random drug testing. Right now Kane only does a pre-employement drug test and it should be ongoing random tests for every Sheriff's Office employee.
5 comments:
Actually, any number of Sheriff Departments throughout IL (and elsewhere) allow their patrol and other specialized staff to have their vehicles taken home. If the people are potentially on call 24/7 (or are subject to "call outs" on off hours), then the last thing needed is for the individual to have to drive to a central location to pick up the vehicle, get the official vehicle, and then go to the requested location. Oftentimes, that's very counter productive.
You may or may not believe that logic, but there's definately some substance to it. I mean, think about it. Let's say you live in Big Rock (SW corner of Kane County) and you get a call out at 12:30 AM to go up to Hampshire (NW corner of Kane County), and you've got to drive into the Geneva area (East Central Kane) to get an official vehicle first? Not smart, and it eats up a bunch of extra time.
I'm all for better use of Kane County's resources, and as a Kane County taxpayer I think there are really serious leadership problems at Kane County (and there's far bigger issues than our Sheriff's department), but this happens to be one case where the proposed "solution" is worse than the problem.
Btw, if it's "County Gas" and "County Insurance", well that's probably not a bad thing. Again, you may not like the logic, but there's a comprehensive record (and tracking gas usage on vehicles is a great tool), and if you have the individuals buying gas out of their pocket and not having to turn in the receipts, that tool goes "bye bye" (incomplete data).
I guess my end point is tha we expect these folks to be "Law enforcement officers", not "ticket punchers". If you want then to be "ticket punchers" first (following all your nice little rules), well, there's probably going to be some loss of efficency in law enforcement efforts, because everybody will be more concerned about first getting all the paperwork done, and once that's all taken care of, then let's worry about the criminals.
Not a good way to operate, IMHO.
I just want a Kane County Sheriff who's not going to be a lapdog to "Queen Karen" and her cabel. She's gotten rid of most of the "Truth Tellers" as it is, I want to see a new Sheriff who's ready to tell her (and/or her minions) to "stuff it" when she tries to pull some of the crap she's gotten away with.
Pat Perez is on record as meeting Karen McConohay many times.
She has made comments to many board members that Perez will be easier to work with. She has met with him more than a few times.
What does that tell you.
Who is a lap dog and who is not?
Who cares about Karen? You people crack me up with all your ant-Karen venom. I'm am with you in voting her out come 2008, but right now all I care about is electing a candidate that ca keep our county safe. Seems to me that the best person to do that job is Kevin Williams.
It's fine to use sheriff vehicles, but they should be ugly and marked, so there's no question that these are public vehicles. Perez is right. Please no civilian vehicles for official business. And if the rationale is that they need to use these for business, they should look like cars used for sheriff business.
Many in Kane County will debate the question of whether Pat Perez deserved to win the 2006 election, but we should agree that the Williams campaign and the Kane GOP, filled with opportunists, deserved to lose.
Through its own malfeasance and incompetence, the Kane GOP lost the Kane County Sheriff’s election, the prize of Kane County elected positions. For many years this office was the engine of antagonism aimed at the County Board and home to the much-maligned daily budget woes. Pat Perez needed only to capitalize on the incompetence demonstrated by the Williams campaign and the Kane GOP to capture the Sheriff’s race, and he passed that mark handily, like a Kane County Eagle running back carrying the ball past the end zone, into the locker room and all the way to the parking lot. Then, shortly after the local election results were posted, the nation fell into the Dem column like one enormous freedom-fry.
Pat Perez wanted this election to be a referendum on Ken Ramsey and the Kane GOP. Despite deplorable and meek efforts by the Williams campaign and the Kane GOP to make the election a choice between two parties, Pat Perez succeeded in making it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on just one: the Kane GOP.
And so, the Williams campaign was destined to fail. The GOP has been in power in Kane County, including our representation in Congress, promising lean government, and it has become the party that needs to learn how to push its fat self away from the dinner table and all those good lobbyist-paid meals.
To whom can we assign blame? Opportunists in Kane County, especially in the Kane GOP, have been drying their gunpowder for years, just waiting to inaugurate “their” candidate into power. “Jobs for all” is the rallying cry for these bottom feeders. Forget job qualifications; just put another “sinecure” in the position.
It's also true that the outgoing Kane County Sheriff is unpopular; that's because the office budget and morale have not gone well. If it were otherwise, the Sheriff’s office would be a political boon to the Kane GOP, and to the multitudes of opportunists looking for a headline or a do-nothing job on staff. The fact is that it is not the opportunist’s position to botch and election, especially since they need jobs to satisfy their insatiable hunger. And while we're on this point, corruption and cronyism are core to the opportunist’s platform.
Indeed, if the conservative base hadn't been disgusted with the ILGOP leadership, and if so many Democrats hadn't run as social conservatives, Kevin Williams might have done just fine in this election.
Republicans lost because they behaved like self-indulgent opportunists, not purists. Opportunists care a lot about county jobs and recognition, so that's where we'll assign blame.
Post a Comment