To maintain some semblance of credibility, it helps to stick to policy analysis and not venture into the black arts of politics. However, the news about the squabbling between Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan and County Manager Wanda Greene is screaming for somebody to make hay of it.
It is election season. All Buncombe County Commissioner seats are up for grabs. Some running for office have stated publicly that one of their intentions in seeking a seat on the board is to fire Greene. They tend to be Republicans. Duncan is a Democrat.
Duncan has run to the press and the commissioners to blow the whistle on Greene bad-mouthing him behind his back and calling him spendthrift for purchases made by Greene and line items she transferred to his department from the general fund. Duncan and Greene are disagreeing on whether Greene, as the fleet manager, can fire and discipline officers for damages to vehicles when county policy says the sheriff has that responsibility over his deputies.
Duncan took over a department badly in need of internal controls. The evidence room was awry with, among other things, missing rape kits. Duncan had to redesign sheriff’s badges because badges and ID’s were being used by people impersonating officers in illicit gambling operations. Duncan challenged the level of staffing in the new prison, and found it to be about half what it needed to be. The county is still dealing with negligence lawsuits pertaining to detention center understaffing during the previous administration.
Further, detention officers had been working 84 hours every two weeks and getting paid for 80. When Duncan asked county management to follow labor laws, they wanted to reduce the officers’ wages to keep their pay the same. The previous administration had planned to open the prison before the plumbing was in place, and before the building had passed its code inspections.
Duncan says he is responsible to the people, who can vote him out of office if he does not uphold high standards of integrity and accountability. He sees no room in his department for a 3% cut, and nodded silently when it was suggested that the county would do better to remove its parenting classes and other socialist programs that tend to increase delinquency.
Crime is spiking in Asheville, but outside the city limits, in Duncan’s jurisdiction, counts of crime are down 7% from the previous administration’s tallies.
Note: I spent well over an hour in Duncan’s office talking about this. I did not solicit a rebuttal from the county because they fed me enough internally-inconsistent misinformation four years ago to last a lifetime.