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Hernando Sheriff's new budget plan is anything but transparent

 
Al Nienhuis’ office uses much of the general fund revenue.
Al Nienhuis’ office uses much of the general fund revenue.
Published March 24, 2016

Sheriff Al Nienhuis says his new plan for setting his cut of county tax revenue promotes transparency, which is, in fact, precisely the opposite of what it's all about.

If he wanted transparency, he'd have gone along with the idea the County Commission unsuccessfully proposed last year: a special taxing district that would have meant tax bills showing the Sheriff's Office assessment down to the tiniest fraction.

Nienhuis didn't like that, of course, and now even seems to object to the current system — the nearly universal one in which public officials stand up at public meetings and ask for the money they think their departments need.

Because Nienhuis always asks for more money than the commission wants to give, he has to ask loudly and repeatedly. It can get ugly, bringing a lot of attention to the fact that his office consumes close to half of the county's general fund revenue.

Don't you think he'd love to avoid that spectacle, to receive a guaranteed, generous annual budget bump without even asking?

Sure he would. Which brings us to the plan Times staff writer Barbara Behrendt wrote about last week.

The Sheriff's Office would be guaranteed a base amount for its budget — the funding level of the 2010 fiscal year — and 45 percent of any additional general fund revenue as property values climb and tax revenues increase.

That 2010 figure sounds like a compromise because, most of us would assume, detention and law enforcement costs were lower back then.

Actually, no. They were a few hundred thousand dollars higher than the amount in the current year's budget.

That 45 percent might also seem reasonable if you believe a draft of the agreement the Sheriff's Office sent to the county last month; 45 percent, it said, is the office's "approximate ... historical share" of the county general fund.

Once again, not quite. This year, for example, the Sheriff's Office is budgeted to receive a little more than 42 percent of general fund revenue.

County attorneys have said that setting such a percentage in advance is illegal, precisely because it avoids the need for a public request.

Nienhuis countered by pointing out that this the way things are already done in Columbia County.

That seems a strange place to look for advanced public policy, but if Nienhuis insists, Hernando might also want to adopt the share of new revenue received by the Sheriff's Office there; not 45 percent, but 39.

It's true that Nienhuis' plan wouldn't mean huge jumps in funding. But it would mean the kind of sizable, steady jumps that would otherwise require noisy, embarrassing public arguments.

Repeated regularly enough, these spats might get county taxpayers thinking about community priorities.

They might start to wonder why the pay of Sheriff's Office supervisors is on par with much bigger counties, according to the most recent figures available from the state. Residents might take a closer look at the starting salaries of deputies in Hernando, which are higher than in any of the surrounding counties, not to mention more than $4,000 higher than the pay for new teachers.

They might even start to ask why such vast law enforcement resources are needed in a county that, when you get down to it, is fairly orderly and peaceful.

Those are good questions to ask, questions that can be avoided when budget increases come automatically, quietly, obscurely — and not transparently.

Contact Dan DeWitt at ddewitt@tampabay.com; follow @ddewitttimes.