Wake sheriff says he has nothing to hide in response to critical memos
Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker released nearly 200 pages of documents in response to internal memos that showed county leaders were concerned with how he was running the Sheriff’s Office.
He also called the release of the internal memos earlier this year an “unethical” leak and part of his ongoing struggle with an insurgency still unhappy he ousted long-time Sheriff Donnie Harrison in the 2018 election.
“I don’t mind saying this,” Baker said in a press conference Thursday. “A lot of it has to do with still some folks who are very upset that there is a new administration in this office. They have been and probably will continue to do anything they can to discredit what we are doing. And that is out of our control. We deal with that on a daily basis.”
Wake County government staff received Baker’s 173 pages of documents just before he released them to the media Wednesday night.
“Wake County stands by the merits of the memos sent to the Wake County Sheriff’s Office earlier this year,” county spokeswoman Dara Demi said in a statement at 5 p.m. Thursday. “We continue to work with the sheriff to ensure his office’s procurement and personnel actions follow county policies and procedures, as well as state law.”
She also rejected Baker’s assertion that the internal memos were leaked.
“The county provided copies of the documentation in question to the media in response to a specific public records request,” she said. “The County Manager’s Office does not ‘leak’ information or documents.”
But Baker called the release “unethical,” and added: “Who is going to address that? I am not hiding anything. I don’t have anything to hide. It’s all right here.”
He stressed there is no animosity between County Manager David Ellis and him and said they talked after the memos were released.
“We talked very briefly about it,” Baker said. “He regretted that it happened. He wasn’t responsible for it, but someone in that office certainly was. But we agreed to continue to move forward and not let that get in the way of what we need to do collaboratively to get this office where it needs to be.”
The News & Observer tried to speak with Ellis on Thursday but was told he was unavailable.
The Sheriff’s Office has more than 1,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $5 million.
County memos
The internal memos were dated in July and September of this year and were reported on by some media outlets in October. They show that county leadership was concerned about several things including:
- Placing “unqualified employees in credential positions.”
- Hiring or moving people to positions that had not been created.
- Hiring people for positions that were not open.
- The “timeliness and accuracy of contract processing.”
- Not competing for a bid and “simply engaging with a new vendor.”
- The handling of cash at the firing range and sheriff’s office not following county policy.
Some vendors were not notified contracts were ending or had been terminated, according to a July memo. The Sheriff’s Office also was using incorrect contract templates and not requiring “appropriate insurance information” from vendors.
Wake County’s concerns were “valid,” Baker said, but what wasn’t reported was that the Sheriff’s Office was addressing those concerns in cooperation with the county.
Part of what Baker released Wednesday included dozen of email exchanges, photos, memos and presentations refuting those points.
“I found that the WCSO was managed by personalities rather than organizational chain of command,” Baker said in his Dec. 4 response. “This produced confusion, job dissatisfaction and lack of uniformity in the application of policy and procedures.”
The memos from the county manager’s office described some actions of the Sheriff’s Office as hasty but Baker said he had to act swiftly.
“There was some immediate changes that needed to be made inside this office,” Baker said. “Hands down, no question. We came in the door, making those moves, trying to get this place back in line.”
Contracts
The county’s concerns about contracts with vendors must be put in context, Baker said. There were delays getting contracts to the county because of his department’s “due diligence” and in some cases, he said, they were able to find savings by negotiating harder.
“Our office aggressively negotiated contracts to remove language that was unfavorable to the county and language that was not applicable to the contracts,” Baker wrote.
The Sheriff’s Office used the wrong template because the new one was approved the same month he was sworn-in and had not been distributed, Baker said.
He also argued that he did follow bidding procedures because the county’s policy says he “should” go through a competitive bidding process or let the finance department manage the process.
“The chief county finance officer apparently interprets these policies to be mandatory,” Baker wrote. “They are not. The term ‘should’ is defined to be a suggestion and does not have the same effect as the terms ‘shall,’ ‘must’ or ‘will.’”
During Thursday’s press conference, he said there are different rules for the Sheriff’s Office when it comes to some bidding processes.
State law does say that some county sheriffs, including in Wake, may select food and supplies for detention facilities without going through the normal bidding process.
One contract the Sheriff’s Office ended was with the food vendor for the jail.
“You had human beings who may be in custody, who may be in jail, may be inmates, but they are still human beings,” Baker said Thursday. “(They) were being fed what most people wouldn’t throw out the back door to a dog. That was something that had to be dealt with immediately. The current vendor was breaking numerous components of the contract. So we had the ability to say get out, found someone who would come in and not miss a meal.”
His report included several daily logs that showed problems with inmates food including someone finding hair and a rock in their food.
There were also exemptions and exceptions made under Harrison, Baker said.
“I am left to wonder why the same contacts in the same form as submitted by the previous administration were accepted by the county only to be rejected when submitted by my office,” he wrote.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 6:17 PM.
