DISCUSSION: STARK COUNTY HAS ONE SUPER BUSY SHERIFF?

Republican Larry Dordea (now second in charge in the Hartville police department) can't wait to get another go at Sheriff Tim Swanson.

Dordea doesn't think Swanson runs a very efficient office.

Dordea ran against Swanson in 2008 and made a very respectable showing.

But will he get the chance?

Stark Countians will recall that Swanson announced before the 2008 election (as required by law) his plan to retire before taking up office again, if re-elected.

As if he didn't have enough to do, the good sheriff has turned to writing letters to the editor to The Canton Repository. The STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT (The Report) applauds Sheriff Swanson for the effort. In his letter earlier this week, Swanson came to the defense of his good pal and Stark County Treasurer Gary Zeigler.

If memory serves The Report well, Swanson, Zeigler and John Ferrero ran as "a law enforcement team" in 2004. The Report is quite sure how Zeigler (the treasurer?) fits in, but that's how it was. "That's how was" until Ferrero had a tiff over the arrangement and dropped out. But Swanson and Zeigler remain as mutually committed friends. Witness the letter to the editor.

Yours truly has written many, many letters to the editors and accordingly has nothing but good feelings for brothers and sisters of the pen.

But then The Report got to thinking. Maybe Sheriff Swanson really doesn't have time to write these letters.

Why would that be?

How about a backlog of investigations?

Undoubtedly, Sheriff Swanson and Chief Deputy Rick Perez have a long list of investigations they are working on.

But The Report remembers how terribly long it took Swanson's department to investigate the Devies matter (Marlboro Township Police Chief Ron Devies and his son Kyle).

The sheriff (actually Chief Deputy Perez) was called in to investigate in early January and it was only last week Stark Countians learned of the results of the investigation.

And, if The Report understands correctly, Swanson has some sort of investigation going on Canton Mayor William J. Healy, II.

When is that investigation going to be completed?

If the Devies investigation is an indication, with the Healy matter being much higher profile; it's anybody's guess.

One thing The Report remembers is that members of the Marlboro community felt they were given the runaround by Swanson et al (i.e. we sent it to Prosecutor Ferrero; Ferrero's people would say "we don't have the report") Kind of reminded yours truly of the Abbott and Costello scene described thusly by Wikipedia:

Who's on First?

Who's on First? is a comedy routine made famous Abbott and Costello. The premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. In this context, the first baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first" is ambiguous between the question ("which person is the first baseman?") and the answer ("Who is the name of the first baseman.").

The Report used to believe that Sheriff Swanson ran an efficient operation. But no more!

Larry Dordea was on to something in 2008 and all Tim Swanson has done ever since is to validate Dordea's contention.

So okay Sheriff Swanson, write this letters for your political pals. But don't forget, getting those investigations done on an expeditious basis is JOB #1.