…and I said nothing.
Now Mecklenburg County commissioner Parks Helms is mounting a full-on frontal assault on representative government in the county. Who will stop him?
Make no mistake, Helms’ bid to remove control of the county jail from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s office would substantially weaken public oversight of a vital component of public safety. The elected sheriff, already with limited law enforcement responsibilities with a combined city-county police force, would largely become a ceremonial post, responsible for courtroom security and little more.
Control of the jail would be handed over to a jail administrator who would report to the County Manager, who of course reports to the County Commission. As such, voters would lose any direct ability to express their support or opposition to jail policies and procedures.
And that is no mistake.
Although much has been made about Sheriff Jim Pendergraph’s initiatives to use the jail as a gateway for deportation of illegal aliens as a motivating factor in Helms’ bid to get the jail out of the control of the sheriff’s office, I think the motives are much deeper and — in fact — much more troubling.
Parks Helms first and most important constituency is the local legal community, including judges and prosecutors. Judges in particular often clash with elected sheriffs. Look no further than the Paris Hilton fiasco for proof of that. Recall that an elected sheriff with control over the L.A. county jail released Hilton against the wishes of a local judge.
A jail administrator under the control of a county board would dare no such thing. Helms knows this, knows that local elected judges like to think of themselves as masters of the courts. But that is difficult to sustain when a sheriff who is elected county-wide often with more votes than anyone else on the ballot controls a significant chunk of the local criminal justice system.
Functionally then, Helms’ proposal would deliver the jail to the control of the local legal establishment and remove a competing political power center from the local political landscape.
Does anyone really think that is a good idea?
A further defect emerges when you focus on the overall lack of direct public control over policy issues in Char-Meck. A vote for sheriff is one of the few levers local residents can pull that has a direct impact on local policy.
Imagine for a second if the job of CATS CEO were an elected office. Would we be in the mess we are now? Further, imagine that a successful elected CATS chief — one who had perhaps bucked the local power structure on continuing to build light rail lines — was leaving the post and some elected official proposed putting the job under the control of the City Manager.
Wouldn’t it be pretty obvious what was going on?
Parks Helms is saying loud and clear that he does not trust local voters, that public input gets in the way of what the Powers That Be want to do.
Bonus Observation: Watch for the Helms camp to hint that either we go along with his plan, or we get George Dunlap as the next sheriff.
