Turnover Costing County Plenty

Employee turnover has cost the Latah County sheriff’s office about $100,000 this year and other departments also are reporting losses.

Sheriff Jeff Crouch said each time he hires and trains a new patrol officer, the county invests $10,000.

With 56 employee changes in the last five years, the office is looking like a training ground for other law enforcement agencies.

“That’s a significant amount of turnover,” he said. “It’s hard to keep people at the sheriff’s office when they can learn their skills here in a year and then go somewhere else and make more money,” he said.

County Auditor Susan Petersen said numbers in the courthouse show a high rate of turnover in the first five years of work.

With longevity not a factor in salary increases, that leaves employees with little incentive to stay there. Petersen said more than half of the county’s workers have been at their current job less than five years.