Questioning Sheriff Stanek’s high travel expenses

Previously, I reported that Sheriff Stanek’s projected 2014 budget is $92 million, which is $43 million larger than Ramsey County’s projected 2014 budget of $49 million. Hennepin is way above every other urban county.

At the same time, Stanek has the smallest population of any urban Sheriff in Minnesota to directly police. Hennepin County is unique in that it is comprised of cities that all have their own police forces. Less than 1% of the population is directly policed by the Hennepin Sheriff Rich Stanek. The other urban counties have more population being directly policed by the Sheriff.

This graph (at top) shows the glaring the differences between Hennepin and other urban counties in 2012 numbers. In comparing urban county Sheriff Budgets, one would expect that the budget is high when the amount of direct policing and reported crimes is high. Hennepin county is the opposite. Given the numbers on direct policing, one could easily make a case that Hennepin’s budget should below Ramsey County’s budget.

So if Sheriff Stanek money is not being spent on policing, where is the money being spent? Today Eddie Frizell, the Minneapolis Deputy Chief running against Stanek gave us all a clue. Frizell’s press release said:

Reports show that within the past 2 years, Sheriff Stanek has traveled extensively while neglecting the communities that matter in Hennepin County. “Just in the past 3 years of his term, the Sheriff has charged over $54,000 in tax payer money to his county issued credit card for over 40 flights and 30 hotels for numerous conferences and out of town meetings,” stated Frizell. “Between the money spent on travel and his administrative costs being doubled, this is money that could spent in other areas of the organization. To me, this doesn’t justify “sound and principled stewardship of taxpayers’ resources”. Hennepin County is best served by electing a community Sheriff that leads from right here at home and November 4th is the voters chance to make a difference,” added Frizell.

A brief look at the list of travel charges leads one to start asking questions:

1. On 01/23/2012, $2,244.20 was spent at “MARRIOTT 33769″ in Washington DC, for the purpose of “JW DC NSA Conf Hotel – Stanek.” A online website lookup of this hotel says that the daily room changes range from $229 to $429. So it appears that Stanek took the most expensive room for 5 days. Is it the policy to take the most expensive room?
2. The number of Sheriff conferences seems high. Why did Stanek go to the WESTERN sheriffs conference?
3. On 03/22/2012, $1,327.20 was spent at Delta Air on a flight for and “Flight to DC and PHX”. Aren’t DC and Phoenix in the opposite directions from Minneapolis? Currently Delta Air round trips delta flights from Minneapolis to Washington are $559 first class. So was this charge for two round trip first class tickets?
4. On 08/14/2012, $183.98 was spent on a “Dinner with Fed Partners” at Sunsets Wayzata. An expensive meal at Wayzata’s Sunset restaurant would be $30. So did Staneck buy meals for 6 “Fed Partners”? Why didn’t “Fed Partners” use their own expense account?

And those questions are only from the first half page, the list goes on.

Stanek is Republican, so we shouldn’t be surprised that he spends other people’s money lavishly.