Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan is questioning the accuracy of an audit that found his agency allegedly overreported the cost of court-ordered oversight in a long-running racial-profiling case by tens of millions of dollars.
A court-ordered monitor has been reviewing MCSO operations for over a decade as part of what’s known as the Ortega Melendres case, or just Melendres, which dates back to Joe Arpaio’s time as the sheriff for Greater Phoenix.
Sheridan told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show that a new audit of the spending MCSO attributed to compliance with court orders in the case started more than a year before he took office in January. He said the monitor initially hired a financial expert who “didn’t even know how to read the spreadsheet.”
“So, they had to hire somebody else,” Sheridan said. “These guys are not CPAs. They don’t have the experience to do an audit of a huge government operation. The sheriff’s budget is about $700 million a year, and the county’s budget is a couple of billion. They don’t have the expertise to do this.”
Read more from our news partners at KTAR here.
