Letter: Douglas County Sheriff Campaign

The Dave Brady for Sheriff campaign claims that “public safety dollars are NOT being spent wisely” by Sheriff Perini. I want to say that I believe that this claim is a clearly false and misleading statement. Here is why. The claims expressed in a recent Brady campaign brochure stated the sheriff’s annual budget had “skyrocked” from $3.1 million in 1986 to $16.0 million. While the raw numbers appear correct, Brady’s analysis and interpretation are very wrong. At first blush the increase seems astronomical and that is what Brady wants you to think. The problem is that this representation is a classical “apples and oranges” comparison. The 1986 $3.1 million budget had not been adjusted for annual price inflation which if done correctly would have made the numbers truly comparable. The failure to adjust for price inflation is a very significant omission rendering the 1986 and 2014 budget numbers completely non-comparable. The omission may have been deliberate since Brady claims many academic and other credentials and should have known better. Nevertheless the omission appears to have led to a series of false claims and representations on the part of the Brady campaign.

When the 1986 $3.0 million budget number is adjusted for annual inflation over the course of the 28 year period from 1986 to 2014, the $3.1 million number becomes approximately $12.2 million. The $12.2 million number is now comparable with the 2014 $16.0 million budget. Using a financial industry standard HP 12C calculator for all calculations, I determined that the budget growth rate over the 28 year period comes out to be approximately 0.97%. This means that the Sheriff Pierini’s real annual budget (adjusted for price inflation) has only grown at the rate of slightly less than 1.0% per year for the last 28 years! More significantly, Pierini’s budget growth rate of approximately 1.0% per year has been less than half the 2.4% rate of population growth. Frankly that is simply an outstanding budgetary management accomplishment that deserves to be applauded and appreciated by all us voters and tax payers. On top of all that he has kept us safe and for that I am truly appreciative.

Dennis Favero