Phil Chang

Our next sheriff needs to be a strong financial manager to ensure that the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office is able to provide critical public safety services for our community. Sheriff Nelson has struggled to grasp what it costs to run the Sheriff’s Office and how to fund core operations. Moving forward, we need a sheriff who can competently manage the Office’s $65 million annual budget.

The needs are great. First, we need to add more deputies. The ratio of patrol deputies to our fast growing population is below recommended guidelines and behind other counties. In addition, the

The county jail needs a physical overhaul to better rehabilitate inmates and keep them safe while in our custody. For example, the jail has inadequate space for visits with family and others who can help inmates re-enter society on the right path.

We won’t be able to meet those needs without long-term fiscal planning and discipline. But political game-playing and bad personnel management from incumbent Sheriff Nelson have created major financial challenges. Serious and astute fiscal management from the next Sheriff is necessary to set the ship right.

During his term in office, Sheriff Nelson dug the office into a hole by cutting taxes for political gain in 2018, only to have to raise them by more than three times as much in 2023. The result — taxpayer whiplash and more than eight million dollars in lost reserves.

Nelson’s bad personnel decisions have also cost the sheriff’s office dearly. He wrongfully terminated a deputy for running against him in the 2016 election. The lawsuit that followed cost the county over $2 million in attorney fees and a jury award to the former deputy.

In 2017 and 2022 a former sergeant and former captain filed lawsuits accusing Nelson of gender-related discrimination and harassment, tampering with internal investigations into a subordinate deputy, and retaliation against the captain for speaking out about potential misconduct by Nelson. The county was able to settle these two cases for $792,000, plus another $100,000 of external attorney’s fees for Nelson’s defense. If these cases had gone to trial in federal district court instead of settling, county taxpayers might have had to pay much more.

During the five years that Nelson’s tax cut was wiping out the sheriff’s office reserves, Nelson offered no serious or viable ideas for raising the additional funds to cover department’s needs. He has demanded millions more per year in Transient Rooms Tax (TRT) revenue from the county to pay for patrol deputies, arguing that the $4 million per year the sheriff’s office receives now isn’t enough. But since the vast majority of county TRT is generated within Sunriver, and Sunriver has its own police department to patrol the tourists generating the TRT, this allocation doesn’t make much sense.

Sheriff Nelson’s best idea for funding the jail remodel has been to ask the voters to approve a bond measure. But the voters resoundingly rejected the last bond measure for the county jail by 2 to 1 in 2010. Given the weak financial position of the sheriff’s office in the last few years, I also wonder whether creditors would even consider making such a loan.

Our next sheriff needs to be able to understand and contain expenses and to generate and manage funding. Of the two candidates, Detective Sergeant Kent Vander Kamp has much more business experience, with an MBA and years of work in finance.

Vander Kamp also has the endorsement of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Employee Association, the union that represents the deputies and staff who deliver public safety to us every day. The overwhelming union endorsement vote for Vander Kamp also reflects who employees believe will improve the culture and morale of the office and generate fewer costly personnel lawsuits in the future.

For better fiscal leadership and support for the workers of the Sheriff’s Office please vote Vander Kamp.

Phil Chang is a Deschutes County Commissioner.

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