Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio accused of misspending as much as $80 million on unauthorized activities and expenditures over the past 5 years. The Board of Supervisors released a report yesterday calling Arpaio’s actions “biggest misspending of state funds in the history of Arizona.”
Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said the misspending could explain why Arpaio’s office has refused to cooperate with county officials over budget issues and initiated a number of corruption investigations against them instead. The report found that the sheriffs department spends 3 to 6 times as much as other agencies to extradite a prisoner, while job records show employees in county jobs that are actually working on immigration sweeps. The Sheriffs office kept a separate set of payroll books different from the records that they submitted to the county.
Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said that if the sheriff’s office doesn’t cooperate, she will ask the federal government to take over running of the county’s jail system.
When asked for comment by New America Media, Arpaio said only: “We are trying to correct the deficiency.”
