Recently Allegany County Sheriff Rick Whitney announced that
he will be seeking another term as our Sheriff. I fully endorse his candidacy
for this position. The Sheriff has run an excellent operation at the Public
Safety Facility in Amity since he walked in the door. A certain Legislator has
continuously brought up his opinions on duplication of services, mismanagement
and the outright waste of tax payers money. In my opinion this Legislator is
wrong. The Sheriff has been under budget each and every year of the seven years
that he has completed in service to the taxpayers of Allegany County. Over
those 7 years his agency has brought in over $15 million dollars in revenue
from housing Federal Prisoners which has not only paid the bond on the facility
but has supplied over $4 million dollars to the County coffers. Both the
Sheriff and Under Sheriff are graduates of the prestigious FBI Academy as well
as the Corrections Officer training school. I believe that the Sheriff and his
staff have done a wonderful job managing the Public Safety Facility as it is
one of the cleanest best run jail facilities around. The Facility passes all
inspections with flying colors from the outside agencies that review it.
As the former Commissioner of Elections I’ve had a positive
relationship with the Sheriff. He offered to allow the Board of Elections the
use of the situation room at the facility for our mandatory annual training of
Election Inspectors and his office also assists the Board of Elections on
Election nights with collecting the results from various poll sites across the
County. This assistance makes it much faster to get those results on Election
nights.
Why is this Legislator seeking to change the leadership by
promoting another candidate? It is a puzzle to me. I believe if it isn’t broke
don’t fix it.
Rick Hollis
