Sweetwater County needs a new sheriff.
I’m not going to say who should be supported in the race, but the one thing I think is certain is we need a new sheriff. Sheriff Rich Haskell has done some good things admittedly, like initiating the inmate work crew. However, his use of county resources and funds hasn’t given him a positive track record in those regards.
The obvious issue following Sheriff Haskell is his use of county funds.
Money we all pay as taxes got used in a irresponsible way under his administration. The biggest example of this was approximately $47,000 he paid to a business owned by his son to guard a critically injured suspect at a Utah hospital. This is a large chunk of more than $50,000 paid to his son and daughter-in-law. The other amount came from handmade greeting cards sent to sheriff’s office employees.
There are other expenditures made during his term in office I don’t agree with on a personal level. One such example involves a number of flat screen, HD televisions that were purchased for placement in the jail. I agree with the purchase itself, but not the location -- they were purchased from a furniture store in Utah. The Green River and Rock Springs chambers have strived to convince residents to “support (their) own, spend at home.” This behavior has spread to the local governments as well. While it may be impossible to get everything from within Sweetwater County, some strive to support Sweetwater County businesses. There are a number of places selling those televisions in Sweetwater County, yet the office took money paid to it from taxes generated from within the county and let those funds bleed into Utah’s economy.
Questionable activity reared its ugly head earlier this year when Haskell’s campaign announcement appeared on the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office website and was sent to media outlets as an official press release from the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office. This was questionable because incumbents running for re-election often use their home email addresses or visit with local media outside of their duties as officials to separate their public duties from their personal and political agendas.
For example, you don’t see John Kolb or Reid West standing up during a commissioners’ meeting to announce they’re running for re-election. Donnalee Bobak, who also serves on the Sweetwater County GOP as well as the clerk of district court, uses her personal email address to send her campaign information and emails about the Sweetwater GOP’s activities.
The sheriff’s office using its official channels to communicate gives the impression that the office supports the incumbent candidate and endorses their candidacy.
More than that however, how that announcement was released would appear that the statement was crafted by Haskell’s public information officer, Dick Blust, while Blust was on the clock. Thus, it would seem that he used county resources, in this case his information officer, for a private matter -- announcing his re-election campaign.
We need someone who will take the management of funds and people more seriously. I really do think we need someone else in that role.
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