The Ramsey County Board, unhappy with Sheriff Bob Fletcher, is researching what it would take to change his position from elected to appointed.
The board is expected to have a report ready for review later this week to be discussed at its July 14 meeting.
“What the board was asking for, is once that information became available, to then engage in a broader conversation with the community about the efficacy of that effort,” said County Manager Ryan O’Connor.
The board has found Fletcher’s actions often at odds with its own agenda.
Members have criticized his spending, his hiring choices, and most recently, his subordinates’ handling of the incarceration of the Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s death.
They’d like the option to replace him.
Fletcher said he welcomes the debate.
“The ultimate accountability is when the electorate gets an opportunity to vote,” he said. “Whenever this does surface, it’s usually evidence that commissioners don’t trust the public to elect their own sheriff.”
HARDER THAN IT LOOKS
How hard would it be to make the change?
On paper, it’s three easy steps: write up a referendum, get about 30,000 Ramsey County voters to sign it, and then get the people to vote in favor of the change. In reality, the process is a daunting legal tangle that has seldom succeeded.
“Efforts to place the issue of appointment before the voters have rarely resulted in a change from elected status,” the National Sheriff’s Association said in a 2019 brief on the subject. “In 1994 Iowa held a referendum to change the status of sheriff from elected to appointed. That initiative was heavily defeated by the voters.”
THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME
The issue is compounded by the fact that state law mandates the position of sheriff be elected, so changing it likely may involve altering the statute.
The last time the county attempted to change something about the sheriff’s position through state legislation, was in 1992 when Ramsey County considered a proposal to merge police and sheriff’s departments — an idea hailed by then Gov. Arne Carlson as fiscally responsible. But it didn’t have much support on the county board and it eventually lost momentum.
In 1995, the county commissioned a study from Hamline University on the merits of having an appointed sheriff. The study concluded that the position should remain elected.
In 2008, when Fletcher was in his fourth term, the county looked into it again. That inquiry advanced to hearings with the Ramsey County Charter Commission, but failed by one vote.
A LONG-STANDING TRADITION
The question of whether the sheriff should be elected or appointed has been around as long as the office, which dates back 300 years when the City of London and the County of Middlesex were concerned with moves by the Crown that would deprive them of their right to elect their sheriffs.
America followed the British model. Across the country, election remains the most popular means of selecting a sheriff.
Sheriffs are elected to four-year terms in 41 states, two-year terms in three states, a three-year term in one state and a six-year term in one state. Only Alaska, Connecticut and Hawaii don’t have sheriffs. In Rhode Island, the governor appoints the sheriff and in two Colorado counties, sheriffs are appointed by the county executive.
The Ramsey County sheriff’s office was the state’s first law enforcement agency, established in 1849 when Minnesota was only a territory. Its sheriff is elected to a four-year term, has about 450 employees and an annual operating budget of about $57 million.
DEMOCRATIC OR JUST POLITICAL?
What are the pros and cons of having an elected sheriff?
“It’s all about the checks and balances,” said Bill Hutton, executive director of the Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association and former Washington County sheriff. “It’s democracy at its finest. You get to elect a law enforcement officer for your county.”
The county board controls the budget and salary of the sheriff and unsatisfied voters can remove him from office through election.
Some say having an elected sheriff politicizes the office. The sheriff, for example, may choose not to hire officers who did not support him in his campaign. But others say having the sheriff subject to the whims of the county board can be just as political.
Hutton said the former isn’t as easy as that, since the police union and rules of the contract play a part in the hiring process. He said the latter is more concerning, especially if the board and the sheriff have opposing philosophies on policing.
“Where me being the sheriff, I worked for the people,” he said. “I worked for every individual of the county that elected me rather than five people.”
A TOUGH SELL
Should the board choose to pursue changing the charter, it will need to convince voters that the county manager is a better judge of the qualifications of the office of sheriff than they are, something other boards have found difficult.
In the 1960s, two counties, one in Oregon and one in Washington, changed their charters to allow the county to appoint their sheriff. Both ended up unsatisfied with the results and voted to return to election. Miami-Dade County in Florida, where the sheriff has been appointed since the 1960s, will be electing its sheriff in 2024 following an amendment change.
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Changing sheriff to an appointed position from elective may not be easy for Ramsey County Board - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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