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Though the outcome of a declaratory judgment against the sheriff is still pending, Curry County’s newest commissioner told his colleagues of a 2007 Oregon Appeals Court ruling that may apply to the current situation.

Referring to an ongoing dispute between the Board of Commissioners and Sheriff John Ward, Commissioner Patrick Hollinger said he and Director of Operations Ted Fitzgerald received information about Daniel v. The Board of County Commissioners for Josephine County.

“A lot of the back and forth, or the lack of back and forth, between the commissioners and the sheriff is [about] who has authority over what and why,” Hollinger told his colleagues Wednesday. “And as we all know, we have a declaratory judgment that we’re still waiting to have happen, but this covers a couple of those items within our declaratory judgment. And that would be positions within the sheriff’s department and who picks and chooses those positions and how those positions are funded.”

Fitzgerald said he and Hollinger received a copy of the Oregon Appeals Court ruling from Teamsters 223, the union that had represented sheriff’s office employees. Staff in the Curry County Sheriff’s Office will be represented by a new union, the Fraternal Order of Police, though Fitzgerald said he didn’t know when that change would take effect.

Information about that appeals court case also comes about six weeks before Curry County voters are set to weigh in on a tax levy to fund more deputies and dispatchers within the sheriff’s office.

Gold Beach resident Dee Ragsdale reminded commissioners of that fact and said she hadn’t seen much data on the proposed levy. She mentioned American Rescue Plan Act dollars the county had received and missing data about how those funds were allocated and spent.

According to Ragsdale, about $1.8 million was in ARPA funds transferred to the sheriff’s office for the jail, $820,000 was allocated to dispatch and $250,000 was earmarked for new vehicles.

“Two years later, approximately, we find ourselves with the U.S. Department of Treasury asking what happened to that money,” she said, referring to an update former county finance director Keina Wolf gave to the Board in February. “What my concern continues to be is it’s like you can pay a vendor for service, but you don’t know as a county resident what that service was. That transfer to the jail for $1,800,000, the $820,000 for dispatch, the $250,000 for vehicles plus other things — there’s no specificity as to how that money was actually spent.”

Communications between the Board of Commissioners and the sheriff broke down about three months after voters in May 2024 rejected a tax levy to fund 24/7 law enforcement. The levy’s defeat forced the county to make several cuts to alleviate a $3.8 million general fund deficit, which included laying off staff.

Curry County also transferred about $1.18 million in interest revenue from its Road Department reserve to balance the budget. As a result of the budget cuts, Ward said his office would only be available to respond to crimes-in-progress from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. five days a week.

Following conflict over the county’s former K9 program, Ward stopped attending Board of Commissioners meetings, though Fitzgerald said he’s continually asked to attend. In September, the sheriff filed a state bar complaint against Fitzgerald saying the operations director had accused him of wrongdoing without providing specifics.

The Board of Commissioners filed its declaratory judgment suit against Ward in Curry County Circuit Court in January, stating they hoped to “resolve long-standing disagreements” with the sheriff over their roles and responsibilities.

On Wednesday, Fitzgerald said the 2007 appeals court ruling clarified the different roles of the Josephine County Board of Commissioners and the county’s elected officials, including the sheriff.

The case stemmed from a dispute between Josephine County Sheriff David Daniel and the Board of Commissioners over who had the authority to promote sheriff’s deputies.

In 2005, the sheriff had asked commissioners to promote a deputy from sergeant to lieutenant, increasing his monthly salary by about $500. Since a retirement or a demotion hadn’t occurred within the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office, the proposed promotion had the effect of increasing the number of deputies receiving a lieutenant’s salary from one to two. The Board of Commissioners denied this request and the sheriff filed a complaint asking a judge to reverse that denial on the grounds that commissioners had no legal right to control promotion decisions or dictate how the sheriff organizes his department.

On April 11, 2007, the Oregon Court of Appeals stated that the Board of Commissioners’ authority to fix the salaries of every deputy within the sheriff’s office gives them the authority to dictate how many deputies receive a specific salary.

“The sheriff has complete control of filling the positions within his department and managing the day-to-day business of that department,” Fitzgerald summed up. “The county commission has the authority to determine the staffing, including the staffing of deputies and everyone in the sheriff’s office and every department within the county.”

Hollinger also cited Oregon Statute 204.601, which states that the county court or Board of Commissioners fixes the number of deputies and employees of “county officers whose compensation is to be paid from county funds.”

The statute also states that the county officer has the authority to appoint deputies and employees, Hollinger pointed out.

Earlier in Wednesday’s meeting, Hollinger’s colleague, Jay Trost, gave Ragsdale some history about Curry County’s use of Road Department reserves, one-time moneys, to fund the sheriff’s office.

According to him, there were fewer than 115 full-time equivalent employees across all departments when he left his employment as the county’s juvenile justice director. When he became a county commissioner in February 2023, Trost said that he had asked for an organization chart and found that there were 151 full-time equivalent employees.

“My question was, how could we have that much of an increase when we have had no increase in revenues,” Trost told Ragsdale. “That’s when the digging started. I can relate to you some of what I was able to put together.”

According to Trost, when the Oregon governor began allowing counties to use their road reserves to fund law enforcement, Curry County had transferred about $200,000 to the sheriff’s office to pay for patrol deputies. In 2003, Trost said, 100 percent of the sheriff’s patrol budget, about $3.1 million, was being paid for with road department reserves.

Meanwhile, Trost said, the county was paying for the jail with one-time COVID dollars. Curry County was “just over $5 million upside down” when staff began drafting its 2024-25 budget. 

After voters defeated the May 2024 tax levy, Curry County’s general fund deficit was $3.8 million. In June 2024, commissioners approved a budget that was about $2.25 million less than the previous year’s budget and still allocated $1.18 million in road reserve dollars to the sheriff’s office.

Trost said if the county hadn’t dipped into its road reserve fund, the budget cuts would have been even more drastic.

“We were essentially operating on what I would say was just a paper floor — it was just a false floor of funding that was never going to last,” he said. “And ultimately that hurt us all and, in the midst of all that, created the division that you discussed.”

Ragsdale also referred to an audit prepared for the county by Moss Adams on the use of road reserve dollars and potential funding solutions, though she said she didn’t think it had “ever received the light of day.” She said she hoped the audit would be informative as the county looks for funding solutions.

According to Fitzgerald, the audit wasn’t informative. He called it “part of the political gamesmanship between the sheriff’s department and the road department,” saying the information the Road Department provided to the auditors was inaccurate.

“The idea behind the audit was to predict how long it would take to run out of road funds at the current usage, assuming that the sheriff was maxing his takeout,” he said. “It was like a race to the bottom. Both sides were spending as much of the money as they could.”

As an example, Fitzgerald said the county had been replacing heavy equipment that was only a few years old, adding “you don’t do that in the heavy equipment business and you especially don’t do that when you’re the government — you make your stuff last.”

If Curry County voters approve the new levy on May 20, property owners will be taxed $1.12 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The levy is estimated to raise about $4.28 million annually and would pay for five more patrol deputies, one sergeant, two dispatchers and would allocate $122,605 toward the sheriff’s marine and Search & Rescue divisions.

When he and his colleagues approved the levy for the May 2025 ballot in December, Trost said the funding it generated would replace the $1.18 million in Road Department Reserves the Board had allocated to the sheriff’s office as well as $1.25 million that comes from the county’s general fund.