Gunter challenges Femling?s work
Hailey lieutenant ramps up sheriff?s race
By MATT FURBER
Express Staff Writer
In his first official press conference as a sheriff candidate, Hailey Police Lt. Jeff Gunter based his campaign platform running as a Democrat on being a ?full time? sheriff. Gunter said Friday that his opponent, incumbent Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling, a Republican, is distracted in his sideline work as a jail consultant.
?I am not critical of the work Walt does with the Idaho Association of Counties, that is a good organization,? Gunter said. ?I am critical of the time he spends away from the office. With 44 employees he has a large department to run. He owes it to the county to be there.?
Gunter said he has personally distributed 4,200 brochures door to door through out the county outlining his campaign platform.
?Jeff Gunter is committed to being your full time sheriff, said Tom Johnson, retired chief of Ketchum Fire and Emergency Medical Services as he introduced the lieutenant at the press conference. ?I am supporting Jeff Gunter because he is a man of great integrity and compassion. He has over 14 years experience in law enforcement in Blaine County. He is not a paid jail consultant and has no partnerships with, or financial or political ties to, persons involved in jail construction. Jeff will devote his efforts towards being your full time sheriff without ethical conflicts or distractions.?
Gunter said he has spent a lot of time on his campaign talking to voters because he is running against a 17-year sheriff with a strong following in the county.
?I have been very encouraged by what I have heard from voters,? he said. ?People talk about being ready for a change. One compliment I have received is that six months ago nobody knew who I was, now everybody knows.?
Gunter said he is interested in staying focused on the issues facing Blaine County, but he is making an issue of Femling?s consulting work, explaining that he sees a potential conflict of interest for Femling in serving the public. Whether the issue is a violation of ethics laws governing elected officials is a matter for attorneys to decide, Gunter said, but he said he wants voters to understand the issue as a gray area that he will be free from as sheriff.
Femling said in response to Gunter?s allegations that this year Blaine County Commissioners voted to give him a bonus for the first time in his tenure as sheriff precisely because he has been working so hard.
?They know this is an unbelievably busy job,? Femling said. ?I put in a lot more hours than I get paid for.?
Femling said he is also tired of the allegations that his associations with Rocky Mountain Corrections, a company he is a shareholder in, distract him from his job as sheriff. RMC is a jail consulting group he invested in 1997 when he thought he would be facing the end of his tenure as sheriff due to term limits legislation.
The campaign should be about the issues facing the county, not how the sheriff makes his investments, Femling said.
?I work a second job,? Gunter said. ?I am not elected and that job is done on my time. As the Blaine County Sheriff, I have made arrangements to terminate that job and devote all of my time to improving the service that the Blaine County Sheriff?s office provides. I am no stranger to 60-hour workweeks. I am no stranger to hard work at all.?
To emphasize his point Gunter brought a copy of one particular contract Femling signed in February on behalf of RMC for nearly $200,000 in services to be provided to Caribou County.
Femling said the time he spent consulting for Rocky Mountain Corrections in 2003 came to about 53 hours, work he does from home largely over e-mail in the evenings and on weekends.
?It is my investment. Other people are doing the work,? he said.
Femling added that his expertise in jail construction has been helpful for Blaine County as county commissioners get closer to providing the community with a new jail. Gunter said that as sheriff he would leave jail consulting for Blaine County to a nonpartisan group of qualified people, focusing his energy on crime fighting and prevention.
At his press conference Gunter outlined some of his ideas for dealing with crime in Blaine County and improving cooperation between the sheriff?s office and city police departments.
?Currently we have no unified way to identify chronic drug users or mentally ill people until they become a legal problem,? Gunter said. ?We have no intermediate steps for these people to get well. We have a fragmented framework with no halfway houses and nobody following up and making sure these people stay on course. State agencies are cutting costs ... We need to identify people solutions. We need to try some new approaches.?
Some of Gunter?s ideas include improved training opportunities for employees, which in turn can improve morale. Gunter said he is also interested in getting new equipment like electronic stun guns as a less lethal option for dealing with combative suspects and automatic defibrillators in patrol cars for dealing with patient resuscitation in remote areas where sheriff?s deputies are often the first responders.
Gunter said his agenda also is to expand youth programs and be more aggressive on drug investigations. He said better cooperation between departments would help close out more cases.
Gunter said the key to this is the immediate establishment of a consolidated E-911 dispatch center and the appointment of a Center Director as specified by the EMS Council. Gunter said there have been many complaints about failures in communication and cooperation and he wants to put an end to that.
?Communications are poor (between departments),? Gunter said. ?There is virtually no records sharing, very little training is shared, and the net result of this is costs go up and cases go unresolved. The public becomes the victim. With minimum effort, I can improve this. A little respect among (E-911) stakeholders will go a long way.?
