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Important legislative Updates from DSAM! |
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Thursday, 24 December 2009 |
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 Your Deputy Sheriff's Association of Michigan has been very hard at work lately defending attacks against you from the legislature and even some Michigan Sheriffs (not our Sheriff, BTW).
Check out this article at DSAM's website which outlines how some Michigan Sheriffs (again, not our Sheriff) have been non-compliant with their statutorily required duty to recertify their Corrections Deputies, and even possibly misusing book in fee money in the process. DSAM started looking into this and somehow ran into some FOIA trouble with some of those Sheriffs. One is left to assume there were some things they didn't want us to know.
DSAM-MI.org has an article where it appears that local (Holland) House Representative Joe Haveman thinks that YOU and your evil P.A. 312 protection are creating a public safety hazard (that's not my hyperbole, supporters of the bill have actually said that). His bill would open P.A. 312 to require arbitrators to consider the municipalities ability to pay. Sounds reasonable right? Well what needs to be understood here is that arbitrators already look at the municipalities ability to pay. So it appears Joe's rather innocuous request might just be another backhanded attempt to open P.A. 312 for debate in the house where anything could happen. Something like you, me and our community losing that protection all together.
There is also another bill introduced by freshman Representative Justin Amash that calls to repeal P.A. 312 altogether. Just in case you might be wondering if all this crowing by DSAM about the attacks in P.A. 312 might just be exaggeration check out this page on the Michigan Municipal Leagues website.
Some other West Michigan legislators (including our own David Agema) have decided you pay too little for health insurance. To remedy this they have decided to propose bills that would require every public employee to pay AT LEAST 15% of their health insurance cost. The irony here is that Agema's political schtick is that he's ultra-conservative. Taking away local communities ability to bargain with their own employees and putting the solutions in the hands of the state's big-government doesn't seem very conservative to me. Again, read about it at DSAM-MI.org
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Kent County Deputy Honored |
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Wednesday, 07 October 2009 |
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 The Kent County Sheriff's Office announced last week that Deputy Tim Erhardt has received the first “Secondary Road Patrol Deputy of the Year" Award from the Michigan Office of Highway Safety and Planning in conjunction with the Michigan Sheriff’s Association.
Deputy Erhardt has been ssigned to the Kent County Sheriff’s Department. Traffic Enforcement Unit for the past nine years. In March of 2009 he reached his career milestone of issuing 10,000 written citations. He has made numerous traffic stops leading to felony drug and other criminal charges.
In the summer of 2007, Kent County had several serious personal injury vehicle crashes and six teenagers lost their lives. The crash investigations indicated the drivers were distracted then each crash occurred. Kent County took the lead in providing distracted driving awareness programs to the teens of Kent County. Deputy Erhardt has been the lead deputy in this initiative.
In 2009 Deputy Erhardt coordinated with five area high schools and promoted a distracted driver awareness student competition. Teams from each high school submitted a poster as well as a video demonstrating the dangers of driving while distracted. The event was judged by local media officials. The winners were invited to an awards ceremony. The winner of the poster contest had their work displayed on a large full size billboard visible to traffic in US 131 and the winner of the video contest had their video ran as a public service announcement on local television.
Click here to download the official news release from the Kent County Sheriff's Office
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It is time once again to sign up for the POAM legal plan.