Clegg Steps Down From Job Well Done

Kootenai County Sheriff Pierce Clegg will leave his office next month in far better shape than he found it.

Eleven years ago, the sheriff’s office was a stronghold of good-ol’-boy favoritism, petty bickering and scandal. In the final weeks of the 1988 campaign, the department was rocked by a newspaper account that confirmed long-rumored office carousing involving incumbent Merf Stalder and a circle of top officers. A close race became an overwhelming victory for Clegg.

Kootenai County didn’t know what to expect from its new sheriff, an independently wealthy, straight arrow with no top-level police experience. Clegg had been out of law enforcement for eight years, after experiencing a belly full of his predecessor’s shenanigans. He became sheriff determined to install a merit system, to restore police professionalism, to win back the public’s respect.

The long faces at the county courthouse following Clegg’s announcement Tuesday indicate he succeeded. That, and three easy election wins. In fact, Clegg had accomplished everything he set out to do by the end of his second term. He ran for a third term two years ago simply to keep the office out of what he considered to be the wrong hands.

Clegg will leave office June 20, as popular as ever with the public and his department - an amazing accomplishment in this jaded age. Clegg’s honesty, plain-spokenness, sense of fair play, concern for employees and contempt for politics have played well in Kootenai County, so well that few Democrats complained when he switched parties to Republican midway through his second term. His willingness to provide backup at accident and crime scenes has impressed his officers.

Unfortunately, Clegg failed at one major task, his attempt to groom a successor. For two years, he’s known this would be his third and final term in office. After his wife, Lois, was seriously injured in a fall from a horse last year, he decided she was more of a priority than his job. His plans to help pick a successor unraveled when Undersheriff Gary Cuff said he didn’t want the job.

So, that places the job of picking a successor in the hands of the Kootenai County Republican Party and the all-Republican Board of Commissioners. The commissioners will select a new sheriff from the three names that are submitted to them by the Republicans. The politicians would be wise to eschew partisanship for Cleggcaliber competence.

The department that Clegg will leave behind is in tip-top shape. Hirings and promotions are based on merit. Controversy has been held to a minimum. The public respects it. That’s quite an accomplishment for a still relatively young man who tidied up his little corner of the world.