MOBILE OFFICE TOPS PALM BEACH SHERIFF'S WISH LIST

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ed Bieluch soon expects to have a movable office
to rival his regular one -- right down to stations for six dispatchers,
camera-toting robots that can peer into a hostage-taker's bunker, and a
flat-screen plasma TV.

"This is all about our commitment to public safety," Bieluch said Tuesday,
ticking off the features of his coming $572,000 "mobile command center" for
a somewhat skeptical County Commission.

The 30-foot-long vehicle will have a soundproof room for hostage
negotiators, communications equipment that can receive pictures from
helicopter-mounted cameras, and even the capacity to make posters in the
thick of an emergency.

The sheriff plans to use federal forfeiture money to buy the vehicle, and a
majority of county commissioners indicated Tuesday they won't try to stop
him. Indeed, several called it a good idea.

But the price raised some commissioners' eyebrows -- a sign of things
likely to come during coming budget sessions, when the sheriff and
commissioners will have to grapple with longstanding tensions in a tight
financial environment.

Under the state constitution and state laws, the county must support the
sheriff and certain other elected officials. The county doesn't tell them
how to spend the money.

But Commissioners Warren Newell and Mary McCarty said Tuesday they'd like
to know the extent of the sheriff's wish list. Besides the command vehicle,
he's recently bought a $158,000 speedboat to track drug traffickers.
Bieluch said the boat already has helped net $38 million worth of drugs.

"All of those things are important," McCarty said. "[But] then next week
it's the crisis-du-jour and `we gotta move on it.' ... I don't know that we
can answer every single crisis that comes up every single week."

Commissioners are exploring the idea of financing the sheriff's office with
its own tax. They say the change could make the office more accountable,
but the sheriff fears it would make it more political.