Sheriff Paul Babeu presents his case for “the Worst Financial Decision in Pinal County History” in a letter to the Feb. 11Minerbut important data is missing from his business case. There are also some obvious red flags.
First, although the sheriff tells us the county receives @$11M of revenue per year from ICE, I cannot find the matching cost side of the business case in his letter. Further, although he has been managing the jail for some years, it appears that he requested the Supervisors hire an outside firm to do a staffing study to determine appropriate staffing levels in the jail. I would expect any executive who has been in a job for this length of time to know the full annual cost of his operation along with the ongoing annual out of pocket costs. It is a red flag for an executive not to know or pretend not to know. A reviewing executive would infer that the cost side might be an ugly story our jail manager would prefer someone else tell. It also appears that, from reading sources other than the Sheriff’s letter that the revenue and cost equation is well known by county professional staff and the businessmen on the Board of Supervisors.
There have been reports that federal detainees in the jail, who had not been convicted of any crime, were subject to harsh conditions that did not meet the standards for treatment set by the federal government. This is a red flag that perhaps corners were already being cut and the cost problem would be difficult to solve.
Clearly, the Board of Supervisors were convinced that the deal with ICE was bad for county taxpayers and that it could not be solved without a very significant price increase. It is always a sad thing to have shut down a losing business, but it happens every day around the world. (It is more rare to shut down losers in tax supported government). The blame game between managers of failing businesses is also a common thing when a business goes down, but Mr. Rios raises a point about customer perception. After the activities in Oracle last Fall, (and considering the long list of issues Mr. Babeu has had with federal law enforcement) how could our ICE customer, the source of the money in the deal, trust Pinal County after everything that happened? How can you embarrass your ICE customer that way and expect them to negotiate a better contract to save the jail when they have so many other better managed jails to choose from? The answer is that you can’t and no smart K9 unit bites the hand that feeds him.
There have been other red flags over the last few years that the Sheriff’s office had some issues with budget management . Everybody has problems managing to their budgets but we have the issue of civil forfeiture funds being used for the Sheriff’s favorite charities. We also had the issue of how the Sheriff acquired and distributed “free“ surplus military hardware contrary to DOD program rules. This could all just be creative management on the part of Mr. Babeu. We are accustomed to creative management and flaming letters of defense from the Sheriff’s office whether or not the explanations, counting and accounting makes any sense.
Lastly we know our Sheriff did not plan to be our Sheriff when this problem came to a head. He had plans to be in the U.S. House of Representatives by now. Or, failing in that bid , he had widely reported hopes of being appointed to manage DPS under a new governor. It is always a significant sign when the boss starts looking for another job and in this case it is a good idea.
Sincerely,
/s/ Donald Cain
SaddleBrooke