News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Les Stiles, candidate for Deschutes County Sheriff, acknowledged Friday, October 20, that two of his print campaign advertisements were inaccurate.
Stiles pulled one of the ads, dealing with 12-hour shifts, that was scheduled to run in The Nugget on October 25. The ad had already appeared in The Bulletin.
According to Stiles, a proofreading error led to a misstatement that there would be a 25 percent cost savings to put deputies on four, 12-hour shifts instead of the current 4/10 schedule.
The candidate indicated that the ad should have stated that there would be an increase in "personnel coverage at no cost outside the existing budget."
While Stiles acknowledged the mistake in claiming a 25 percent reduction in personnel costs with a change to 12-hour shifts, the candidates still have a fundamental disagreement about the cost and efficiency of 4/12s.
"The bottom line is that it's going to increase the coverage 25 percent and it's not going to cost the taxpayers anything (extra) to do it," Stiles told The Nugget.
Incumbent Sheriff Greg Brown disputes Stiles'5 15
claims. The sheriff notes that federal law requires payment of overtime and/or compensatory time off for time worked in excess of 40 hours per week.
According to Brown, the 4/12 structure would cost the sheriff's office $350,000 in overtime costs.
The other ad, which ran last week, dealt with the sheriff's office budget.
Stiles said, "the most significant error was that I compared 'apples to oranges' with respect to the sheriff's budget."
Stiles claimed that the sheriff's budget had increased by 40 percent over the past four years. An October 19 story in The Bulletin reported that Stiles came up with that number by comparing actual expenditures from 1997-98 to the adopted budget for 1999-2000, without taking into account over $1 million of cash carry-forward rolled over into the current fiscal year.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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