Aldermen appear poised to bring the budget ax down on a request to add extra security for a pair of elected city officials.
As the Post-Dispatch reported earlier this month, Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed had sought to add two deputy sheriffs to the city’s payroll that would be assigned to his office and the comptroller.
After being quizzed about the proposal at a budget meeting this morning, Reed backed away from the plan.
“If it’s going to be a big controversy, just remove them,” Reed said.
The city’s original budget plan, distributed around City Hall in a thick binder last month, called for the sheriff to get three extra deputies.
But the city’s Board of Estimate and Apportionment approved an amendment that would add two more deputies at a salary of $26,988 each. The Estimate Board - comprised of Reed, the comptroller and the mayor - must sign-off on all of the city’s major financial decisions, including the budget.
The two extra deputies, according to Reed’s office, would be used on an “as needed” basis to provide additional protection for Reed and Comptroller Darlene Green, particularly when they are at an event away from City Hall.
An aide for Reed has said that the deputy could also serve as a driver.
When not otherwise needed, Reed has said, the deputies would be added to the sheriff’s courthouse security detail.
Reed said today he would prefer to use city sheriff officers — whose duties include transporting prisoners and serving as court bailiffs - for extra protection rather than regular city police, who should not be taken away from “stopping the murders, rapes and robberies out there.”
But Alderman Stephen Conway, chair of the aldermanic committee that oversees the budget, questioned why the city needed more deputies at City Hall or the courthouse.
“The sheriff didn’t ask for it,” Conway said.
Conway said he would seek to cut the request when his committee makes its budget recommendations in a few weeks, an attempt he is confident other aldermen will endorse.
Comptroller Darlene Green, who also appeared before the budget panel today, said the idea for additional security belonged to Reed, not her.
Though her office said earlier she would welcome the extra protection, Green said today it is not a good use of taxpayer dollars, although both she, the mayor and Reed supported the measure at the Estimate Board.
“If the city says, ‘Comptroller, here is your bodyguard,’ I will reject it,” Green said.
Green