I read that the county formed a sub committee to investigate the possible privatization of the Tazewell County Jail.
Well, the sub committee members can close up shop and go home because two statements by Sheriff Huston printed in the May 29 Pekin Times tell it all.
The article clearly shows that the main source of the problems in the jail is Sheriff Huston himself. His inability to update a 20-year-old personnel manual and his refusal to do job performance evaluations of his personnel, shows exactly where the responsibility for costy problems in the sheriff’s office lies.
I don’t know which is worse: Sheriff Huston’s excuse that the personnel manual couldn’t be updated over the last 11 years because his captains were too busy to get the job done or his excuse that, he doesn’t do performance evaluations because he would have a problem with fairness and consistency because he would have to rely on union members to evaluate other union members.
What lame excuses for failing to implement the two critical components of any successfully managed organization.
If Sheriff Huston’s Captains of Jail Superintendent were too busy to do a policy rewrite, than couldn’t he do it himself? After all in his campaign literature, Sheriff Huston stated that he has a Master’s Degree in Administration. Surely he has had a class or two that dealt with writing policies and doing evaluations.
Sheriff Huston’s excuses for failing to do critical evaluations and police updates would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these failures on his part have cost the county more than a million dollars in lawsuit settlements and other costs. A county board member said, “If you continue doing the same things you do today, you’re going to continue to get the same results and that’s status quo. And, unfortunately, that is the business we’re running and status quo is not good enough anymore.”
Well, Sheriff Huston has been doing the same thing for 12 years, so why should we expect anything to change in the jail if he is the Sheriff for the next four years? The jail escape was just another example. Can the county really afford Sheriff Huston anymore?
Chuck Friend
East Peoria
