Community members urge delay in sheriff appointment, call for a more public process
The unique power held by a county sheriff has been a point of tension in communities across California and the country. Elected directly by voters, the sheriff not only determines how laws are enforced upon their county’s residents, but oversees the hour-to-hour lives of the incarcerated, and the conditions in which they live. Unlike a police chief — a position often hired and fired by a vote of the city council — the sheriff is accountable only to voters. Beyond controlling the office’s budget, the county board of supervisors is otherwise powerless in checking a wayward sheriff. This level of autonomy often drives the view that sheriffs are largely above the law because they are the law.
I remember once asking a government official whether the sheriff really was the most powerful position in a given county. “I don’t know of another department that carries guns,” the official responded.
The authority to seat and unseat a sheriff comes from voters alone. Except in a rare situation unfolding in Santa Cruz County, where a new sheriff is about to be given a full, four-year term without an election, or so much as a public vetting process.
On Tuesday, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to appoint Undersheriff Chris Clark to a four-year interim role, just weeks after Sheriff Jim Hart announced his plan to retire in December. However, some community members are calling for the supervisors to slow down and initiate a more open, public-oriented hiring process.
Peter Gelblum, board chair of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, but speaking for himself, wrote a letter to the supervisors Friday urging they postpone the vote and take their time with the appointment process.
“The situation is undemocratic enough already,” Gelblum wrote. “To ensure some measure of accountability and openness the BOS should create a process where anyone interested in the position can apply, and community members get to participate in interviewing the candidates and provide input.”
The county has roughly four months to replace Hart, but Supervisors Zach Friend and Bruce McPherson have asked that the board vote appoint Clark on Tuesday. Hart has endorsed Clark as his preferred successor for an “interim” sheriff term that will last a full four years.
Hart was initially elected to a four-year term in 2022, but a statewide realignment of sheriff elections with the presidential cycle extended Hart’s term to 2028. By technicality, his replacement, appointed by the board of supervisors, will get to serve four years without needing to face voters.
“At an absolute minimum, the [supervisors] should create an open call for all those who may be interested in fulfilling Sheriff Hart’s term, as it does for the County’s far less important Boards and Commissions, interview and investigate all candidates, and report the results to the public,” Gelblum said.
OF NOTE
Santa Cruz at the center of unfolding foster crisis: After an all-but-failed eleventh-hour attempt to pass state legislation narrowing California foster care agencies’ liability in sex abuse and neglect claims, one of the country’s largest nonprofit insurance firms, based in Santa Cruz, announced last week it would pull out of insuring the agencies.
Pamela Davis, founder and chief executive of Nonprofits Insurance Alliance, a 501(c)(3) that insures 90% of the state’s foster family agencies, said her organization was forced to make the decision due to growing financial risk in backing these organizations in abuse and neglect lawsuits. Davis said the decision could result in the collapse of the foster family agency arm of the larger foster system in California. That concern was echoed last week by the state’s top insurance officials, who said the dissolution of liability insurance could displace thousands of foster children. Roughly 8,100 children are served by foster family agencies throughout the state.
LOOKING AHEAD
Supervisors to make call on sheriff: Toward the top of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors’ Tuesday agenda is a vote on whether to appoint Undersheriff Chris Clark as interim sheriff when Sheriff Jim Hart steps down at the end of the year.
Watsonville eyes a new city manager: Twice-interim city manager Tamara Vides could finally rise to a permanent post as Watsonville’s chief executive on Tuesday. The Watsonville City Council is expected to vote on whether to give Vides, a 25-year veteran of the city’s government, the job. When Vides took over as interim city manager in April, she told Lookout she was unsure whether she’d go for the permanent role.
Santa Cruz City Council gets busy: On Tuesday, the Santa Cruz City Council faces a deluge of votes, ranging from a new paint job on downtown infrastructure as part of a beautification project to new stipends for people serving on city boards and commissions, and a law to streamline outdoor dining permits.
WEEKLY NEWS DIET
Local: With California a lock for Kamala Harris, Santa Cruz County Democrats are turning their electoral energy toward swing states. My colleague Wallace Baine recently wrote about the locals who are traveling to swing states such as Arizona, and writing postcards to voters in Nevada, in hopes of giving Harris an edge this November.
Golden State: As with many California cities, Long Beach in Southern California has escalated its homeless encampment sweeps in recent weeks. However, the Los Angeles Times reports that with a shortage of nearly 1,000 shelter spaces, people are increasingly told to move without anywhere to go.
National: Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will stay in the International Space Station until 2025, after NASA determined that the Boeing space capsule intended to shuttle the pair back to Earth could not be trusted. Instead, NASA will rely on a SpaceX ship to retrieve Williams and Wilmore next year. As NBC News reports, the astronauts planned to be in the ISS for only eight days.
ONE GREAT READ
Saying goodbye to my beloved dog Zeus, by Jody K. Biehl, for Lookout
Of the many human emotions that drive a writer to the page, the untethered overwhelm of grief may be the most challenging to translate. How does one find a clear and precise thought while upside down and feeling around in the dark?
That’s all the more reason why I was moved by this recent piece from my colleague and Lookout’s Community Voices editor, Jody K. Biehl. Biehl recently lost her dog Zeus, a 14-year-old Portuguese water dog that her family took in as a puppy.
The loss of a pet pulls on the heart in its own twisted way; a pain we quietly agree to the day they enter our lives. Biehl’s portrait of her own struggles in the weeks following Zeus’ death is achingly beautiful and generous.
“The day after he passed, I sprawled out on his empty bed, which for almost 14 years has faced ours, making him the first thing I see in the morning. The emptiness of that space is staggering. I now hang clothes over the bed frame to block it out, to remind me not to look for him.”