SHERIFF'S BUDGET ALREADY TOO SMALL

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors is taking the wrong
approach to cutting the county budget when it treats the Sheriff's
Department and law enforcement in general as just another place to
cut across the board.

Law enforcement is probably the first and most basic duty of county
government to its citizens. Mendocino County's residents have
recently made it clear in the voting booth: they support clamping
down on illegal marijuana growing and they elected candidates who
were out front on that issue.

Local citizens want the sheriff's department to have the resources it
needs to address not only illegal drug issues, but all crimes, from
murders to domestic abuse to home invasions to vicious dog attacks on
livestock.

The Sheriff has already taken steps to reduce spending where he can
but as he told the supervisors, law enforcement is expensive.

This county faces at least another year of likely shrinking revenues,
while it continues to ignore the looming deficits from the debt that
mounts for employee pensions and health care.

Yet the Board continues to resist the notion that it must begin
looking at wholesale elimination of programs that are not essential
(and perhaps rethink sending a representative to Washington to lobby
for federal stimulus funding for a "digital Bookmobile" for heaven's
sake).

Making serious budget decisions is a tough and uncomfortable job.
Going line by line, program by program, finding out which are
mandated which are not, which can be shut down and where the county
simply must tell the state "no" is a long, arduous path, but the
board must get started on it.

And to start, it must accept that the sheriff's budget is already too
small and find the savings elsewhere.