A 10-month saga that pitted Carroll County’s sheriff against its government and drew attention throughout Maryland concluded Thursday, when commissioners voted against letting residents decide the county’s primary police agency.
Commissioners had voted unanimously last October to create a county police force with an appointed chief, but Sheriff Kenneth Tregoning — whose office was to be reduced with the new force — claimed they were shutting the public out of the process because they had not held a public hearing.
Carroll’s state lawmakers responded, introducing a bill that passed the General Assembly and required commissioners to hold a referendum if they continued with plans for a county department. The bill expires in 2010, when the commissioners are up for re-election.
Commissioners Julia Gouge and Dean Minnich voted Thursday against a referendum; Commissioner Michael Zimmer elected to let residents vote.
“The commissioners were consistently open with their intentions, forthright in their actions and deliberate in their considerations,” Minnich said. “We moved not with haste, nor with secret intent.”
Minnich was the only commissioner who did not express regret over how the police decision was carried out.
Gouge hoped to spend several months holding meetings throughout the county to educate residents on the police agencies, and she wanted the state law changed so that commissioners could move forward without a referendum next year.
Tregoning said he was not surprised with the way commissioners voted.
“It seemed to me it was more a personal attack on me and my office than it was a discussion on future policing,” he said after the meeting.
Tregoning had refused to take part in a panel charged with guiding the transition to a county force, but after the meeting, he said he would cooperate with the county to ensure residents’ safety.
Gary McLhinney, former head of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police, supported Tregoning and believed the majority of residents did, as well.
McLhinney, who attended the meeting, said afterward of the commissioners: “What are they afraid of? Are they afraid of someone telling the truth? You can’t count on them to do that.”
The commissioners’ plan also would have abolished the state’s last Resident Trooper Program, in which the county contracts troopers to patrol.
This year, instead of adding three more deputies to the sheriff’s office, as commissioners have done the past several years, they added three troopers.
