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Sheriff Joe and David Hendershott are lying to us!
"[Sheriff Joe] waved his hand and said he was not allowing the bean counters to manage his operations" - F*ck the law, I'm doing what I want! Barkell has said that in recent years, she was frequently pressured by Hendershott to violate financial policies. Barkell has also said that she had made Arpaio aware of Hendershott's abusive treatment of subordinates.
Arpaio knew about financial problems, ex-CFO says by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and JJ Hensley - May. 12, 2011 10:34 PM The Arizona Republic Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's former longtime chief financial officer says the sheriff for years knew of financial problems within the agency, disputing his claims that he had no idea they existed. Loretta Barkell, who retired in March, said she repeatedly warned Arpaio and then-Chief Deputy David Hendershott that they could not use restricted jail funds to pay for other functions, such as patrol, human-smuggling enforcement and public-corruption investigations. Barkell made her statements in an exclusive interview on Thursday with 12 News reporter Joe Dana. In agreeing to the lengthy interview, Barkell said she was tired of Arpaio and other sheriff's officials blaming the financial problems on rank-and-file staff who did what they were told. Arpaio has repeatedly denied knowledge that his agency was misappropriating the public funds, characterizing the problems as a "computer glitch" and "bookkeeping errors." Arpaio on Thursday denied Barkell's charge, saying that he learned of the problems last year, when she and Hendershott brought the issue to his attention. He said he immediately convened a meeting and ordered staff members to resolve them. County budget officials first suspected the financial problems in early 2010, and in September, briefed the Board of Supervisors on their potential extent. The true degree of misspending was verified at a public hearing in April. Arpaio's staff has agreed that $99.5 million in funds restricted to use in jails was misspent on other activities. Barkell said Arpaio, Hendershott and other senior staff had known of the problems for years. She said she cautioned them time and again over the past 10 years that they could not use the detention money for other functions. "The former chief deputy and the sheriff, and all the executive staff on the 19th floor, they made those decisions on where to place personnel, they knew about what they call a 'cross-fund issue,' where they could not move certain positions or individuals from . . . the detention side to the patrol side," Barkell said. "They had been told every year, several times a year (that) they could not do that." Asked what the sheriff's response was, Barkell said, "The sheriff waved his hand and said he was not allowing the bean counters to manage his operations, that the budget people, the accounting people, personnel people would have to figure it out and fix it. But he was not going to change his decisions on how he was managing his staff." When Arpaio was told of Barkell's statements, he laughed and said that she was wrong and that he immediately took action to resolve the misappropriations. He also pointed out that Barkell, as chief financial officer, could have raised the issue before last year. "It's been going on for eight years," Arpaio said. "Even if it is true, she just brought it up." Barkell worked for Arpaio for about a decade, overseeing annual budgets of up to $270 million and sheriff's personnel functions. She has been interviewed multiple times by the FBI and state investigators in recent years about the Sheriff's Office financial activities, its contracts and Hendershott's personal finances. During past interviews with The Arizona Republic, Barkell has said that in recent years, she was frequently pressured by Hendershott to violate financial policies. Barkell has also said that she had made Arpaio aware of Hendershott's abusive treatment of subordinates. When she told Arpaio, she has said, he told her to take her problems to Hendershott. During interviews with investigators who examined numerous allegations of misconduct by Arpaio's employees, Barkell stated that Hendershott mistreated employees. "If I witnessed it, I informed the sheriff," Barkell said Thursday. "There were numerous times when I went in to the sheriff and said, 'This behavior is not acceptable under the law, and under personnel standards, this is not allowed.' " The sheriff's response, Barkell said: "I'll take care of it." Yet the mistreatment continued, she said, for "years. Years. Years. There was nowhere else to go. There's nowhere else for those sheriff employees to go if they feel they are in a hostile work environment. He's an elected official. I'm a fortunate one. I got to walk away." Barkell said Arpaio "needs to admit to his failings or downfalls" in trusting Hendershott. Arpaio had "total faith and allegiance to the chief deputy," she said. "Total faith and devotion, and always defended him. He was blindly loyal to David Hendershott, no matter what I would say, or anybody else would say." Arpaio conceded that Barkell complained to him about Hendershott's behavior, but he said she asked to transfer out from Hendershott's command to another division. Arpaio said he asked Hendershott if he could transfer Barkell and Hendershott denied the request. "I don't think she liked it," Arpaio said. "She didn't like his (Hendershott's) personality and wanted to report to me. She's not in my chain of command. That's why I have a chief deputy to handle all these situations."
Financial missteps in MCSO may cost public Arpaio says funds' misuse is trivial; county scrambles by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and JJ Hensley - May. 15, 2011 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic For years, suspicions persisted of questionable financial activities and corruption within the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Recently, some of those suspicions were verified: A county budget probe found Sheriff Joe Arpaio misspent $99.5 million from a restricted fund over eight years, and a separate internal investigation concluded that some of Arpaio's top commanders ran a rogue operation that targeted enemies and flouted the rules. While nobody can predict what the legal consequences may ultimately be for the Sheriff's Office, the financial implications for taxpayers are only now beginning to be understood. While Arpaio portrays the misspent $99.5 million in detention funds as no big deal, county officials characterize it as a financial disaster. County budgeters and sheriff's officials are trying to figure out how to repay the detention funds, whose use is restricted to certain jail-related functions, without financially hurting other county departments. At this point, no one can say for sure where the money will come from, how long it will take to pay back or how it could affect other county operations. "No question, this is a serious harm and a serious foul in the sense that the money could have been better-spent - even in the law-enforcement arena," County Manager David Smith said. "The question now is how many years do you pay it back in order to have it even out, in order to not have a severe impact on general-funded agencies?" Meanwhile, the county is averaging $100,000 a month in legal bills to prepare its defense against lawsuits and notices of claim totaling $177 million. All stem from failed corruption investigations of judges and county officials by Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Other legal costs continue to mount from federal investigations into Arpaio's agency; ongoing lawsuits between the Board of Supervisors, Arpaio and others; and expenses related to State Bar of Arizona complaints against Thomas and two former deputies. In a Friday interview, Arpaio told The Arizona Republic that he now has a better handle on his agency. He said the termination of his two top commanders, a change of leadership in key positions and more face-to-face interaction will help resolve administrative problems. Arpaio also said he plans to make top executive staff unclassified county employees, meaning they would not have as many job protections as Merit System employees, giving him power to fire any of them at any time and for any reason. Byron Schlomach, policy analyst for the conservative watchdog Goldwater Institute, said the depth of financial difficulties facing the county raises questions about its overall management. "Clearly, officials in Maricopa County at best are misguided in their stewardship of taxpayer resources because of decisions that have resulted in lawsuits," he said. "Given the depth and breadth of what's been going on at the county, this will cost constituents a lot of money. The bottom line is the sheriff isn't exercising the oversight that he should've been. And there's been a fundamental failure by the Board of Supervisors to hold him accountable." Misused funds Years ago, voters approved a sales tax of one-fifth of a cent per dollar to build and operate the county's jail facilities. Though it was to be earmarked specifically for jail-related expenses, Arpaio over time used the money to pay the salaries of officers with other law-enforcement functions like patrol, human-smuggling enforcement and public-corruption probes. Since 2004, sheriff's officials misappropriated $84.7 million in detention funds and an additional $14.8 million generated from inmate phone calls and other items. County officials calling for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice recently provided federal prosecutors evidence related to the misspending. They want it reviewed as part of a federal abuse-of-power investigation into Arpaio, Thomas and others. Loretta Barkell, former chief financial officer for the Sheriff's Office, said Arpaio, former Chief Deputy David Hendershott and other senior staff knew for years about the misspending. Arpaio counters that the problem came to his attention only within the past two years and that he asked for it to be corrected when he found out. "If it's so serious, if she was so concerned, I have never received a piece of paper from her saying, 'Sheriff, please do something,'" Arpaio said. "Find me a document where I would know that I got a problem." There also are disagreements over the impact of the misspending. Smith and others contend that the best use of the misappropriated funds would have been their allocated purposes. But sheriff's officials said the misappropriated detention-fund money paid the salaries of deputies who would have been paid through the sheriff's general fund had the money been properly allocated. Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre pointed out that the Sheriff's Office returned a surplus of more than $40 million to the county's general fund during the past eight years - money that theoretically would have gone to pay deputy salaries if the sheriff's budget had been properly appropriated in the first place. "Could other things have been done (with that money)? Maybe," MacIntyre said. "It's not overspending. It's not writing blank checks. The same people and the same employees would have been paid, just in different funds." Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan said he expects the sheriff's general-fund budget to increase by $8 million next year and the detention fund to decrease by about the same amount to reflect employees being paid out of the proper funds. Officials with the county's Office of Management and Budget refused to comment about possible scenarios to replace the money in the detention fund. They are scheduled to discuss possible solutions at a May 23 meeting. Smith said the plan could include a combination of proposals such as taking money from the general fund to pay back the detention fund, shifting staff around and finding other cost-savings within the agency. For years, Smith said, the county had been supplementing the detention fund with money from the county's general fund, a pot of money that typically can be used to pay for almost anything. That money could be used to credit back some of the misspent funds on the county's balance sheets, he said. "From a score-keeping standpoint, we could credit ourselves back with a substantial amount of that money, but in the long run, that money could have been used for something else - no question," he said. Costly suits, claims The county's internal battles, meanwhile, have been pricey for taxpayers - and costs continue to climb. So far, more than $5.6 million has been spent, mostly on legal costs tied to more than a dozen lawsuits between the Board of Supervisors, Arpaio and Thomas. Most of those lawsuits were resolved in recent months, although others remain. Arpaio's staff worked with the sheriff to dismiss 16 of 18 lawsuits that Hendershott spearheaded against county officials. Arpaio said the decision to resolve most of them reflects a more refined approach to dealing with county officials. "You can get a lot of things done if you have mutual respect and trust so maybe you don't have to sue," Arpaio said. Judges, county supervisors, current and former employees, and one private citizen separately stand to receive more than $177 million from notices of claim or lawsuits that allege malicious prosecution or false statements by those on both sides of the county conflict. Last November, the Board of Supervisors approved a $10 million contract to defend county officials against the claims, some of which could eventually be settled before going to court. The Arizona Republic filed a public-records request in February seeking documents reflecting costs associated with the years-long battles. Those documents have not yet been produced "because it is budget season" and budget officials "cannot gather and evaluate the data" requested by the newspaper, a county spokeswoman wrote in March. Asked last week about the expenses, Smith said the county over the past three to four months had been spending about $100,000 monthly to prepare its defense against the claims. "There's no way to predict how long it will last - theoretically, it's years," Smith said. "We need to use some of our most critical thinking of how to approach this. We need to marshal all the legal ammunition we can to defeat these claims, and then we'll just have to see how amenable people are to talking reasonably." The county also is footing the bill for ethical complaints brought by the State Bar of Arizona against Thomas and former deputies Lisa Aubuchon and Rachel Alexander. Costs have exceeded $350,000 to defend the three attorneys on the current set of complaints.
For more on Sheriff Joe's theft of $100 million from the Maricopa County taxpayers check out these articles. |