Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill leads a community forum on opioid drugs in May 2018 at the Saranac Lake Free Library’s Cantwell Room. (Enterprise photo — Peter Crowley)

MALONE — It looks like Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill is losing two more deputies in the ongoing feud between lawman and lawmakers.

County legislators stressed at a special meting Thursday morning that their actions are not fueled by animosity aimed the sheriff’s way. Mulverhill’s been in control all along, they claimed, and his decision earlier this month to pull security from the county courthouse and the Department of Social Services building on Finney Boulevard after he learned he’d lost funding for a pair of deputies/correction officers forced their hand. Mulverhill said at the time he had no choice but to restructure staff due to their cuts.

Legislators voted Thursday to restore the security Mulverhill pulled by creating four per diem officers — to be hired by District Attorney Craig Carriero — using DSS money tied to said services under it’s contract with the sheriffs department. Unfortunately for Mulverhill, those funds had covered the salaries of two deputy/correction officers in his employ that he recently removed from that security detail.

“We have to counteract that,” said Legislature Chairman Don Dabiew, D-Bombay. “We have no control over that.”

Mulverhill had control, Dabiew said, and “this is where we ended up.”

Legislators had previously passed a resolution freeing up to $160,000 to go toward restoring the security Mulverhill pulled. Thursday’s resolution creates “four per diem special patrol officers, competitive class, management B positions, $25 hourly rate, not to exceed 910 hours per year.”

So in effect, Mulverhill loses four positions now, but legislators pointed out that he’s staffed beyond a 2014 analysis by the New York state Commissioner of Corrections that recommended a minimum of 58 full time employees and 10 per diem personnel. Counting Undersheriff Terance White, Legislator Lindy Ellis, D-Saranac Lake said there are currently 59 full time employees and 15 per diem, after factoring in Thursday’s resolution that will effectively eliminate two more of Mulverhill’s employees.

Mulverhill, who said he felt ambushed and blindsided when the first two positions were cut, isn’t feeling too in control. He said the initial cuts could impact all programs under his charge and create a dangerous situation at the jail, and the Legislature’s latest resolution compounds that.

“To the best of my knowledge, the DA can only deputize investigators,” he said. “I want to make sure they are doing it right.”

Legislators take issue with any picture painted by Mulverhill that depicts them as creating chaos at the jail, providing a graph — which included their projections into the coming year — showing that since 2014 the inmate population has dropped. For 2014, the census for the Franklin County Jail was 116, compared to 91 in 2018, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services web site. The annual count reflects daily counts averaged by the number of days reported in a given year. In 2019, the inmate population at the Franklin County Jail has ranged from 66 to 94.

County lawmakers estimate those numbers will fall until they are most often in the 60s. Mulverhill has countered he’s not comfortable with cuts based on guesswork and on Thursday stressed again he’d rather wait until sometime next year, after he and legislators have examined the impact of bail reform, before making staffing decisions. The law that takes effect Jan. 1 prohibits judges from setting bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felons, resulting in some people released from custody with appearance tickets instead of being confined to jail while trying to raise bail.

“Why do it now other than being vindictive,” Mulverhill said. “I am more than happy to evaluate it down the road.”

He questioned why other positions were not considered for cuts and said he would have reviewed per diem slots.

Dabiew said this mess started when the Legislature began considering the impact of bail reform — which it opposes — and Mulverhill’s use of road patrols.

Mulverhill said he knows he’s not supposed to utilize deputies for road patrols and doesn’t “officially” engage in the practice. But with the opioid epidemic and individuals texting while driving, when a deputy or two are not busy at the jail, he feels he’s obligated to send them on the road to help keep the community safe.

Now he has to prepare to tell a couple more deputies they are out of a job. He contended that the Legislature, for a variety of reasons, at one point supported and approved each of the positions he has had in place.

“That board has ulterior motives for taking those positions,” Mulverhill said. “We have cut four police officers. It really makes no sense at all.”

But Ellis said, “We are trying to see how do we best take the limited funds we have and protect our public.”

“It has nothing to do with Republican/Democrat,” said Andrea Dumas of Malone — like Mulverhill a Republican — referencing the sheriff’s claim the board is playing partisan politics. “We are doing the best we can for the people in the county.”