City and county law enforcement agencies could be left untouched in a proposal for Evansville-Vanderburgh County government consolidation, says the chairwoman of a committee charged with crafting the blueprint.
Rebecca Kasha said after a subcommittee meeting tonight that the 12-member Evansville-Vanderburgh County Reorganization Committee could propose no change in law enforcement in the proposal it plans to submit to city and county governing bodies by early July.
"I guess we always have the option of just saying we’re not going make a recommendation about public safety, that everything stays as is," said Kasha, a League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana member who helped collect signatures for the petition drive that kicked off the current consolidation push.
She made the remarks after a meeting of the reorganization committee's governance subcommittee at Central Library in Downtown Evansville.
Kasha said another option is to ask the Evansville Police Department and the Sheriff's Office to come up with their own plan to merge, as some other city and county agencies have done.
"We could say for now, things will go as is," she said. "Maybe two years, we set the deadline and in two years, you will come back with a program of how we’re going to make this work.”
Kasha stressed that she is speculating, saying the picture will become clearer when the committee's public safety subcommittee hears a detailed consolidation proposal from Sheriff Eric Williams on Monday. Committee members also want to talk further with Police Chief Brad Hill about the proposal he made last week.
Hill proposes that his department assume all law enforcement duties in a consolidated government. His written proposal, released May 10, estimates more than $2 million could be saved over time by eliminating dozens of Sheriff's Office jobs by attrition.
Hill's plan would have his department handle all normal patrols, responses to complaints and incident reports, community policing and specialty units such as criminal investigation, traffic enforcement, narcotics, school resource officers, bomb squad, K-9 and the SWAT team.
The Sheriff's Office would retain oversight of the jail, court security and serving court papers.
The two departments would not be merged formally, which Hill said would save money in such startup costs as uniforms, cars and weapons, and would leave contracts and pensions untouched.
Williams has recommended a consolidation of the Police Department and Sheriff's Office into a single agency under his direction, but he has not put the idea into a detailed written report.