The process for crafting Johnson County’s annual budget is lengthy including appearances by department heads making a formal pitch for funding, and public hearings for the taxpayers to weigh in on how they would, or wouldn’t like to see their tax dollars used in the upcoming fiscal year (FY23). There are also discussion and decision-making meetings where the five members of the Board of Supervisors debate budget requests and cast votes on a line item basis with three votes necessary for an expenditure to advance.
At the supervisors’ Jan. 12 discussion and decision-making meeting Sheriff Brad Kunkel’s $810,841 budget request was reviewed with a proposal for a $240,000 Lenco Bearcat armored truck to replace the military surplus MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle scrapped on a unanimous vote. A $404,782 request for 100 new body-worn cameras and in-vehicle cameras to completely replace the units currently in service was cut in half. A 5-0 vote approved funding half of the cameras in the new fiscal year at a cost of $202,391, and to consider funding the other half in the following year’s budget.
Kunkel had stated the need for replacement arose from having units nearing the end of their service life and needing replacement, as well as a desire to have one system in place rather than a mix of old and new on separate operating platforms.
Supervisors Rod Sullivan and Jon Green supported the full appropriation, but Supervisors Pat Heiden, Royceann Porter, and Lisa Green-Douglass opposed, effectively killing the second half of the purchase until FY24. Green-Douglass stated her opposition was due to her concerns over the department’s policies regarding usage of the devices coupled with a desire to stagger replacement costs in the future so as to avoid large expenditures such as this.
The cameras were revisited Jan. 19 in the second discussion and decision-making meeting with Supervisor Pat Heiden reversing her earlier vote against fully funding the request and granting the Sheriff his request for 100% replacement. Heiden told the board she had been having second thoughts since the first vote.
“I got concerned about who has them, and who doesn’t, and I wonder how the county attorney feels about that if anything came up and needed to defend some action, and it’s just caused me a lot of grief about how this particular item, how we could do that (fund it all),” she said.
Green-Douglass responded by saying “That could be an issue, who has them and who doesn’t, but currently, they don’t use them all the time. They have them, and they don’t use them. And we heard that from the Sheriff himself. So those issues of if we had to defend an action, and they didn’t use it, well then you couldn’t. So, in the absence of them … perhaps they have a policy, and they don’t follow it or having a policy of always having them on, no exceptions, there are times, perhaps 50% of the time, when they’re not used. Who knows what that percentage is, because they don’t enforce, or they don’t make them always use them. So, it’s already happening. They may as well not have them if they’re not turning them on.”
Sullivan advocated for restoring full funding. “I was here when we did this (implemented the body cams) and I know history is worth a bucket of spit, but we had a bunch of racial and social justice advocates who asked us to do this, and we did, and I think partially undoing it is a bad decision. That’s one of many reasons why I voted for this.”
Chairwoman Porter pointed out cellphones, rather than body-worn police cameras, have had more impact. “George Floyd. If it wasn’t for people and their cell phones, we wouldn’t have a lot of times nothing if people didn’t come forward with cell phones. If we really want to look at it in all reality, it’s all about everything that’s come forth as far as justice, social justice, and racial justice, has been cell phones.”
Green said he too has struggled over the cameras. “I’ve been disappointed by some of the answers, or the lack of answers we’ve gotten from the Sheriff when we’ve asked some of these questions. To Supervisor Green-Douglass’s point, he’s had ample opportunities to discuss vehicles and camera policies and what-not. One of the reasons I’ve advocated for fully funding the cameras this year, even though it’s a hell of a lot of money, is because it would remove one excuse, which is that we’re sharing cameras and it got bumped trading off from one deputy to another…it would just make it clear that they have the equipment, so if the video evidence isn’t there, it’s because of a failure to follow policy and not because of some complaint the battery died on my camera.”
Green-Douglass reiterated her concerns over camera policy and her continued reluctance for full funding. “From what I see, the Sheriff’s Office uses Lexipol (a private company providing policy manuals and consulting services to law enforcement agencies, fire departments, and other public safety organizations) for their policies. It’s pre-packaged policies that you can customize, but they don’t. Until the policy is really specific to our community, our needs, I think that we could talk until we’re blue in the face. And the bottom line is, we have no control over whether or not the Sheriff’s Office adopts a certain policy or not. We could be right back where we are with funding all of these, but sometimes having them on and sometimes they don’t. Because we have no control (over their policy). We can hope until we’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t change it”
The Supervisors also revisited Kunkel’s request for a new patrol vehicle, to go with a new patrol deputy at a cost of $42k. While the Board approved the deputy 4-1 (with Green in opposition), only Sullivan supported purchasing the vehicle, initially.
Heiden raised the issue pointing out the Board had no problem with a new truck for a new employee with the County Conservation Department. “It was like, well of course, they have to have another vehicle. So, I want it to make sense in my head, and be fair and consistent,” she said.
Green-Douglass did not see it as a simple apples-to-apples comparison.
“You have a 24-hour office so at any given time there are officers who are not using the vehicles that are assigned to them. I see one parked in the neighborhood right next to me every single afternoon. You’ve got your day shift, you’ve got your night shift, and you’ve got those folks who aren’t working with their vehicles parked at home whereas Conservation ends their workday at a particular time so those folks that need to be out and about, they do need to have a vehicle. The officers, the ones who aren’t working, those vehicles can be shared. Why in the heck do we pay so much money for these vehicles, and have them outfitted and everything, and they’re sitting in peoples’ driveways. We can drive around the County and point them out.”
Porter asked if the new deputy would still be hired without the patrol vehicle, “Because he (Sheriff Kunkel) said he really needed it, and we voted for one and not the other.”
“I would imagine the Sheriff would just need to work out the logistics of, to Lisa’s point, of making better use of the vehicles that he already has that aren’t in use at any particular time,” said Green.
Sullivan took exception saying “I want to push back a little because there’s like a value judgment there in the ‘make better use.’ I know that the former Sheriff (Lonny Pulkrabek) and the current Sheriff have the same philosophy on it, but it’s not just something they made up. They arrived at this is how they want to do it because of a number of reasons. So, I think we ought to actually talk to the Sheriff about this rather than speculate.” He also returned to the cameras saying the in-car cameras are on when the vehicle is moving, but most often do not have their body cameras on while driving. “When they stop and get out and go to a scene, then you hope that it’s on, and Lisa, I wish there was more guidance when you use it, but I have also heard them talk about the times where walking into a domestic violence call, they don’t have it on because they don’t want the victim to have her/his image out there in the public.
So, they do have a little bit of discretion as to when they turn it off and on, and we can argue about that, but I’d still like to just see them get the cameras.”
Sullivan added he agrees with Kunkel and Pulkrabek on the law enforcement benefits of having vehicles out in the communities.
“I grew up in Sutliff and they had a deputy (residing) there if they needed a deputy in a second. And that’s worth something. And I think that’s part of the decision-making they’ve made over the years. If we want to tell them we’re not going to do that, figure out a new way to do things, I think that’s OK, but I think we should do that with everybody.”
“Well, if the Sheriff wants to make the argument that it is important to have that off duty vehicle at Sutliff, or if he wants to identify a couple locations throughout the county where he thinks that visibility is important, I would be welcome to hear that,” said Green. “But speaking for myself, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t think it’s justifiable that every deputy has their own vehicle regardless of their personal circumstance.”
With Heiden and Porter changing their votes to yes, the request for fully funding the camera package and the patrol vehicle was approved 3-2 with Green-Douglass and Green opposed.
The Board went through the budget requests line-by-line and managed to cut $5 million from the proposed budget. The Supervisors also approved moving $3.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) money to the general fund.
A public hearing on the proposed budget, which would take effect on July 1, is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 5:30 p.m. in the Boardroom in the Johnson County Administrative Building, 913 S. Dubuque St. in Iowa City.
Supervisors reverse course on Sheriff’s requests
February 3, 2022