What do Yuma County leaders think of power to remove elected office-holders?
Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen has been indicted on state and federal charges related to his international adoption service, leaving some questioning whether or not county supervisors should have ability to remove such elected officials from office.
The Yuma Sun asked former and current Yuma County officials their opinion on whether a supervisor should have the power to remove elected officials, and why the positions are elected in the first place. County residents elect officials such as the assessor, the treasurer and the sheriff, while the city appoints similar officials such as city clerks, treasurer and police chief.
Former Yuma County District 1 supervisor Lenore Lorona Stuart said that she believes the supervisors should not have that ability. “Supervisors shouldn’t have the right to [remove an elected official]. That’s why you have voting. Someone could remove someone from office for no good reason if they had that power,” Stuart said. “If it’s really an egregious matter, the courts will take care of it.’
Concerning why elected officials have to be elected, Stuart said that’s just the way the laws were written for the state of Arizona.
“The laws were set in place that way,” she said. “People elect officials based on their qualifications. When you elect an official, you decide if they’re qualified. The city’s different, and that’s the way it is.”
The spokesman for the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office, Alfonso Zavala, gave differing opinions.
“Yes, they should [have the power to remove elected officials]. There should always be checks and balances of what’s going on.” Zavala said. “It should be statutorily mandated.”
Why does the city appoint their officials while the county elects? It’s apples and oranges, Zavala said.
“There’s no comparison between city police and the sheriff’s office. The chief of police runs the police department. The sheriff’s office runs the jail, any and all civil procedures, search and rescue and boating and rescue,” he said.
Zavala’s point is that the sheriff’s office includes running processes and duties that go beyond administration. The sheriff’s duty works to serve the land and resources of the people, and much of the same can be said with other county offices.
“The entire population should vote on the sheriff because it deals with resources, not people,” Zavala said.
Former Yuma County District 5 Supervisor Greg Ferguson said that the problem with removing elected officials in the county is that most of them don’t run on the precedent that they’re qualified for the job in the first place. “The problem is that the only office that has any qualification is the superintendent of the school board; you have to be a teacher,” Ferguson said. “To run, all you have to do is run. It’s really a popularity contest. To remove someone because they’re not doing the job, it would be kind of difficult. You might think they’re incompetent, and I might think they’re fine. I don’t know how they’d do it.”
Ferguson’s opinion about why the system is set up to elect county officials and appoint city ones is similar to Stuart’s. They both point to the fact that’s simply the way the law is set up.
“Well, that’s the constitution of Arizona,” he said. “I have no idea what was going on 100 years ago and why they decided to set it up that way.”
Current Yuma County District 2 Supervisor Russell McCloud has the same trouble speculating about why the Arizona constitution was set up to make county officials elected ones.
“I would assume they wanted the people to have that power,” he said. “I know in other state constitutions the supervisors appoint some county officials, but here the framers deemed the people should be the ones doing it.”
McCloud said he hadn’t given much thought to the question of whether supervisors should be able to remove elected officials, but he believes they shouldn’t.
“I don’t know that we should have the power to overrule the people,” he said.