By Sara StrongThe city of Luverne and Rock County signed a Joint Law Enforcement Contract in 1997, and since then, officers, dispatchers and city and county leaders have largely endorsed it.Considering the $534,000 each pays for sheriff and dispatch services, it’s one of the biggest budget items for both the city and county, and is a high priority with residents as well.Now, some in the city of Luverne are questioning the merits of joint law, both in its cost to the city and in its effectiveness.Joint law eliminated Luverne’s police department and enlarged the Rock County Sheriff’s Department to the office it is today.City Administrator Greg LaFond said he’s doing research that he thinks will show the city would be better off on its own."Is it cost beneficial to the city? That’s what the council has to examine," LaFond said.For starters, LaFond said Luverne is losing $18,000 in city ordinance fines that now go into the Joint Law Fund. If the city had its own department, that would be one source of revenue. "That’s fine if the money goes into the fund," LaFond said, "except when there’s no effort on the part of law enforcement." LaFond was referring, in part, to the non-sufficient fund prosecutions, which officers don’t investigate or spend time tracking, yet the department keeps the fine revenue. Other fines from municipal ordinances include city-only laws, such as loitering or parking violations.LaFond said Luverne shouldn’t be singled out as the only city in the county that has to forward ordinance fines to the county law enforcement fund.County and City Attorney Don Klosterbuer said the smaller Rock County cities would earn less than $1,000 a year in municipal ticket fines.Since 2000, just 12 complaints were filed on behalf of smaller cities in Rock County.Department fusion Luverne Councilman David Hauge said he’s spent some time reviewing old meeting minutes and talking to former officers. He suspects that objections to joint law weren’t fully considered, despite the experienced law enforcement personnel who were vocally against it.County Administrator Kyle Oldre said, "We tried to hit it from all the angles and make sure everyone was heard."Klosterbuer recalled "heated and vigorous discussions" during the long process of merging the two departments.He said all sides of the issue were heard, but the people against it were unhappy in the end because they weren’t convinced it would work.Deputy Gerry Vorderbruggen was one of those. However, he spoke at Monday’s meeting in favor of joint law."At the time, I was a city of Luverne employee for 20 years," he said. Even though he was against it through the entire decision-making process, Vorderbruggen now says joint law benefits citizens and that the city of Luverne gets the same quality and quantity of service it got before.Sheriff Mike Winkels was first opposed, but has since changed his mind."I was opposed to it. There’s a lot of benefit to it, but at the time I didn’t want it," Winkels said.He said that joint law allowed the creation of an investigator, and all department workers can cross check names and crimes, instead of each deputy or officer handling separate cases."They’re the same law enforcement," Winkels said. "The only difference is who we serve. … I serve everyone in Rock County."Hauge said some serious crimes, including an ATM theft and arson right on Highway 75, might have been prevented had the city been able to appoint a chief and direct hours of patrol or the type of presence in the community.Taking another look at the numbersCounty Commissioner Ken Hoime said, "The more we worked on it, it added up and persuaded me to give it a try."Hoime said he was first against joint law when all of the committee meetings started.County Board Chairman Ron Boyenga voted against joint law in 1997. He has since changed his mind and favors Rock County having one Sheriff’s Department.Oldre said that the city isn’t the only party with concerns about law enforcement costs.The city of Luverne actually has a contract for service arrangement with the county, even though it is called joint law. That means that if the money Luverne puts into the department runs out, Rock County picks up the difference. That has meant that Rock County has had to pay an additional $236,478 from 1998 to 2002. If there is excess money in the fund, the city of Luverne pays less the following year because the money stays there.Boyenga said, "We don’t want to subsidize the city of Luverne."The budget is mostly personnel — $970,000 — and the rest isn’t under anyone’s control, Oldre said. Housing prisoners, cases that require heavy investigations and trials are all unknown at the start of every budget.Mayor Gust said that if costs and charges can’t be reduced, maybe additional revenues should be looked at, like more citations through the city instead of law enforcement. That will be a part of the city’s ongoing research in law enforcement issues.Luverne pays half of the law enforcement costs, but also 20 percent of the overall county tax dollars, which pay for the other half of law enforcement.Oldre said he didn’t believe the city would be saving money by reinstating its own department, but the city hasn’t finished the research yet. For example, the city doesn’t have a law enforcement building and would probably still have to contract for the dispatching services, for example."They had more officers when they joined joint law than the county had. It’s going to be costly to keep those numbers up and provide 24-hour coverage," Oldre said.
