To the Editor:

During the June 20 meeting of the board of commissioners, it became clear that the political majority of the board rules with an iron fist.

The sheriff’s department will lose again. By mandating that the jailers receive and maintain a Basic Law Enforcement Training certificate (BLET), which requires approximately eight months of four hours per night and some Saturdays to complete, a raise is not likely in their future.

The county will not pay for the training, but will allow jailers to take four hours from their 12-hour shift to attend class. This will amount to a cut in pay of almost 30 percent. (Keep in mind that the person who cleans the Womack Building already makes more than the jailers.)

So, in summary, the board will not allow a pay increase until a jailer takes a 30-percent pay cut, works an eight-hour shift and attends a four-hour class every night plus maintains a household on poverty wages. All this in addition to the mandatory 160 hours of training to be a jailer.

Way to go, guys and girls, I don’t think any of you would like to be on the receiving end of this kind of treatment.

–– Keith Holbert