Back when state Assemblymember Gregg Hart was a Santa Barbara County Supervisor, he and Sheriff Bill Brown frequently butted heads over management of the county jail — how big it needed to be, how many inmates it should hold, how many custody deputies were needed, and whether there were cheaper, more humane places to put many of the inmates.
Hart and Brown are still butting heads, this time over a bill — AB 2257 — that Hart just introduced in the state legislature that would empower county supervisors, in all of California’s 58 counties, to appoint someone other than the sheriff to run their county jail.
According to Hart’s District Director Ethan Bertrand, the bill would give California county CEOs and supervisors a degree of leverage they now lack when negotiating with their sheriffs. Since 1993, sheriffs have been legally empowered to call the shots on how county jails are staffed and run. “Without a monopoly over the power to run the jail,” Bertrand said, “the sheriff would have greater incentive to work toward solutions with the board of supervisors.”…