Sheriff’s audit revealing, perplexing

A substantial percentage of Muscogee County voters believed, and probably still believe, that then-Sheriff John Darr was good at his job, despite his department regularly wrapping up fiscal years with seven-digit deficits. Despite those cost overruns, plus a long-running (and taxpayer-funded) lawsuit against the city for more money, Darr’s margin of defeat to his successor, Sheriff Donna Tompkins, was only a little more than 400 votes out of more than 12,000 cast in a runoff.

But in the end a majority of voters, slim though that majority proved to be, apparently decided Darr’s way of running the office of sheriff was unsustainably expensive.

A just-released transitional audit, which city auditor John Redmond said is normal procedure after a department’s leadership changes, bears that out. And while it offers some new details about where so much money went, it probably leaves most people still shaking their heads over how the Sheriff’s Department, which was more than a half-million dollars in the black during the last four and a half years under Sheriff Ralph Johnson, piled up $13 million in cost overruns during the eight-year tenure of Sheriff John Darr.

And, as the audit noted, that sum does not account for Darr’s legal costs, which the consolidated government is legally obligated to pay for a constitutional officer.

Probably the most publicly damaging effect of that deficit — again, not counting the legal expenses, either of Darr’s suit or of the city’s defense — is that it cost Columbus more than 31 days’ worth of operating reserve, the primary measure by which a city’s bond credit rating is established. How many more days will be tacked onto that because of those legal costs we don’t yet know.

As reported by staff writer Alva James-Johnson, the audit notes changes that account for some expense increases. For instance, the 2008 sales tax for public safety provided $21.7 million for the sheriff’s office — but it also resulted in far more arrests and substantially more court cases, as well as the need for more courtroom security: “Corresponding expense increases are a natural outcome of this growth,” Redmond wrote.

But those factors don’t explain seven-digit overruns in medical costs, jail detentions or the Operations/Uniform Division.

The audit also noted that accounts set up for special events or programs were used primarily for those purposes; but sometimes “a portion of the expenditures appeared to be for operating and capital expenditures of the Sheriff’s office that should have been paid from appropriated budgetary funds and compliant with city procurement policies.”

The audit recommends — not surprisingly — a full-time financial manager for better expense control and monitoring. (Tompkins has already filled that post.)

It will be interesting to see what the sheriff finds in the way of department demands and costs as she gets further into her tenure. The difference between what her predecessor said it takes to run the office and what she pledged to run it for has a lot of big numbers in it.

This story was originally published March 15, 2017 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Sheriff’s audit revealing, perplexing."