PHOENIX — Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Thomas Galvin strongly condemned recent allegations that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office misrepresented how much it spent on court-reported oversight.
“The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has been under federal oversight for about 15 years,” Galvin told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Thursday.
The recent allegations against the office stem from a court-ordered audit of expenses reported by MCSO in what’s known as the Ortega Melendres case, a racial profiling case that dates back to Joe Arpaio’s time as the county’s sheriff.
“The numbers that we’ve been given by the very smart budget team at the sheriff’s office is that this cost taxpayers $350 million in counting over 15 years,” Galvin said.
However, a report federal judge G. Murray Snow filed in court on Oct. 8 found that MCSO inappropriately attributed over $163 million to the case, representing 72% of the agency’s reported costs. This total includes $144.4 million in personnel expenses that were either misattributed or improperly prorated.
Why does Thomas Galvin doubt the credibility of new MCSO report?
“If you want to quibble on the numbers, go ahead, but you cannot quibble on the number of years that this has been occurring,” Galvin said. “However, I do stand by our sheriff’s office and the budget numbers that they have provided.”
He doubted the report’s credibility, saying that Warshaw, the court-appointed monitor behind the report Snow released, isn’t a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
“I will point out that the auditor (who) was handpicked by the monitor is not a CPA. We have 650,000 licensed CPAs in the United States of America. If they had a CPA who could come in and say that this has been an issue, I would give it more credence,” Galvin said.
He also said MCSO was doing “everything it can” to comply with the judicial orders.
“That’s paramount. That is what’s important, but why are we been doing this for 15 years?” Galvin said. “Regardless of the price tag, even though I do defend what the number is.”
He’s not the only county official calling the audit’s accuracy into question.
Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan told KTAR News that the audit of the spending started more than a year before he took office in January — and that the monitor hired a financial expert who “didn’t even know how to read the spreadsheet.”
The post Thomas Galvin stands by MCSO despite allegations in federal monitor’s report appeared first on KTAR.
