Is Someone Telling Pinocchios
[This article was originally published January 2, 2024]
On Monday, January 1, 2024 we received an email addressed to us and several other third parties.
Attached to the email was a PDF document containing information about the purchase and up-fit of a number of golf carts purchased by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. Based on the contents of the document, we are convinced it is authentic.
Reading the included documents confirmed the information we had written about these golf cars in our article “Sheriff’s Office Spending Goes to 11!” The documents also confirmed that the Sheriff’s Office had lied to the Bend Bulletin about the actual costs of the golf carts.
On January 4, 2024, an article appeared in the the Bend Bulletin titled “Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office spends $37k on golf carts, more than previously disclosed”. In it was contained the following paragraph:
“When The Bulletin sent a list of questions asking about the costs of such upgrades in November, the sheriff’s office did not disclose any of this information, only that it purchased two used golf carts in May for $7,500 each. Sheriff’s Sgt. Jason Wall said the dealer ‘donated the seats, roof storage, body work, and dash boards.’”
It turns our there are a couple of problems with Public Information Officer (PIO) Sergeant Wall’s original statements to the Bulletin back in November.
The first was that two golf carts cost the Sheriff’s Office a lot more than $7,500. The second was that the office had not purchased just two golf carts, but had actually purchased FIVE of them.
The Bulletin article continued by stating:
“Wall added that he did not see The Bulletin’s questions about the cost of upgrades to the golf carts, did not know about the added costs and apologized.
‘I feel terrible that I missed that,’ said Wall, who added: ‘In no way shape or form was I trying to mislead you.’”
Sure you do sergeant.
We now turn to the PDF that we was sent to us. Contained inside it were copies of numerous Sheriff’s Office documents pertaining to the purchase of the golf carts.
As can be seen in the screen shot below, the two golf carts referred to in the Bulletin article, actually cost $16,199.06 and 11,078.30 and not $7,500 as originally reported by the Sheriff’s Office.
Furthermore, we don’t think the dealer ‘donated the seats, roof storage, body work, and dash boards.’” as claimed by PIO Wall. We believe the Sheriff’s Office was charged for those items, be it overtly or by them being included in the price of the carts. We will make our case for this later in the article.
One thing we have discovered: Captain Bailey and PIO Wall are very good at parsing words. So while the base cost of the golf carts was $7,500 each, as we have seen, the total cost was much much higher.
Below are copied of the two purchase orders for each of the golf carts.
LABOR COSTS
Next we turn to the labor costs for the up-fit of the golf carts.
As can be seen from the work order detail below, Andrew Cokenour of the Sheriff’s Office Automotive Unit spent 40 hours at a cost of $1,651.20 to upfit one of the golf carts.
We are sure Cokenour had nothing better to do than upfit a golf cart that would be driven around by Lieutenant DeLuca down in La Pine to service slushies.
We note that this cart was also fitted with a Honda EU2200 generator for the purposes of powering the infamous Sheriff’s Office Slushy machine
The next work order relates to the second golf cart. This one was up-fitted by Peter Martin the head of the Sheriff’s Office Automotive Unit.
Per the work order Martin did the work off duty. Does this mean that Martin volunteered his time to work the cart? If so, was he pressured to do so by Sheriff’s Office management?
We also note that Martin did not perform the work at the Sheriff’s Office automotive shops. The work order cryptically states that the work was completed “Not at work facility”. So where exactly was the work performed?
MORE GOLF CARTS?
Now we come to the three remaining golf carts.
As can be seen in the purchase order below each of these carts was purchased for $3,900. In an attached document there is comment that the batteries in these carts will likely need replacing.
Note that these three carts are 2019s whereas the first two were 2018. The 2019s are almost half the price of 2018s. Even considering battery replacement it seems to us that the 2018s were quite expensive at $7,500 a pop. Could that large price differential be for the ‘donated the seats, roof storage, body work, and dash boards.’” that PIO Wall was talking about? We think this is highly likely.
We can only imagine that up-fitting these three carts will cost as much if not more than the first two. Is this really the best use of taxpayer dollars?
At the end of the day, it is clear the Sheriff’s Office leadership, and specifically Captain William Bailey, was caught red handed lying to the press.
The command staff are under a lot of pressure by both the county and the community for their out of control spending. In addition, there has been a very bright spotlight shining on the large sums of money spent on the two golf carts.
Thus the temptation to obfuscate and mislead the press was obviously too great, and rather than doing the right thing Captain Bailey gave into the pressure and lied to the press.
Unfortunately, this kind of behavior results in a rapid erosion of public trust. If the Sheriff’s Office can lie to the press about some golf carts, what else are they capable of lying about?
REFERENCES
