When I move to a location, I want to learn as much as I can about where I live, and to do that I, get involved in my community,  joining organizations, volunteering at local places, and reading as much as I can about where I am.

Sometimes something is thrown at me that was not in my wheel house and perhaps was totally unknown to me.

Such was the case when the Sheriff of Bristol County, someone with whom I had no dealings and being a law abiding citizen would have no need to get to know, announced at his 2017 swearing in that he would volunteer inmates from the county jail to build Trump’s Border Wall. I oppose the idea of a wall, and keep up with the news about it, but this volunteering inmates was something new, and so I began to familiarize myself with the sheriff to see just who he was.

He was proposing spending county funds and using county resources to step outside his role and gain national attention.

That is not his job, and local citizens of the county in the jail should be prepared to reenter their local community as contributing citizens, and not be used as indentured servants for something which has no direct positive effect on their home community.

I already knew that he was a Republican and obviously claimed to be so pro-America that he would do something like what he was announcing he would do, and that he promoted himself as a fiscal conservative intent on being a good steward of the county citizens’ tax dollar, although he seemed to be ignoring that transporting, housing, guarding, and feeding the wall-builders would cost county money.

In my background reading to get up to speed on him, I found him to be somewhat of a contradiction of his public self, and someone who is prone to repeat unverified opinions as opposed facts as well as those things heard on Fox News and conservative talk radio, both of which I watch and listen to in order to be aware of what the “other side” believes and upon which they base those beliefs.

I found, what is common knowledge in Bristol County, that in 1999 the Bristol County Sheriff came into possession of a patrol boat, justifying that by saying,

 “The boat we have was given to us and paid for through a federal program. There was no cost to the department.”

Not only was there no cost, up front anyway, but there was no need to have a boat as the sheriff is a county jail warden and the members of his department the guards. Unless the county has a jail on a boat, the Bristol County Sheriff Office has no need for one as his department does not patrol the coast, but guards inmates at the jail on land and transports them by van when they have to get to court.

But he also explained that,

“The boat (a used 25-foot U.S. Coast Guard Boston Whaler) was refurbished by the sheriff’s office and some radio equipment was purchased for the boat.”
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The added cost of the upgrades and the installation of a new radio, required manpower to accomplish that, and the boat would have to be cared for and repaired when necessary. When he said it was refurbished by the sheriff’s department, he meant county money received through taxes was spent, so it was not free.

The boat, when it was used, it was used for redundant work as, according to the sheriff it was used for work done by other departments that use the boats they already had.

“We’ve used the boat for a number of things. Most recently, it was used to aid a person who was stranded out in the harbor. We also were asked by the Coast Guard and the environmental police for our assistance during Summerfest and the upcoming Fall River Celebrates America.”

And what happened to the boat?

As mosquitoes are drawn to blood, so too is the sheriff to his public image.

The sheriff donated the boat with its GPS system, twin 150 engines, trailer, and safety equipment to the town of Swansea for its town shellfish officers.

The taxpayers of the 20 towns in Bristol County paid for the refurbishing of a boat they were told the county owned after the fact, and the sheriff danced away with positive public relations and a photo-op for giving the boat to one of those towns because, as the sheriff explained, there had been budget cuts in his own department, so he was not able to have the manpower for the boat. Swansea, with whose police chief the sheriff had worked on a committee, approached him about giving the town the boat, and he saw it as a good idea that would be beneficial to one community in the county.

He had obtained an unnecessary and useless boat to look more important than he was, spent county money on it, and then gave the White Elephant away in a gesture to get good PR and have people forget his original self-promoting poor decision.

This piqued my interest, especially when reading through some other articles about the sheriff I came across this comment related to the sheriff’s claim of being a good, fiscally responsible Republican on a Republican website,

“How can Hodgson claim such when he is unable to manage his finances? Unable to pay medical and utility bills. Need to call in National Guard because he is facing a budget shortfall. A good manager with fiscal conservatism is able to manage the budget and if forecasting a shortfall finds innovative ways to meet the goals of the organization (in this case: Care, Custody and Control)”

I just had to do more research. If his fellow Republicans were calling him out, perhaps he had a propensity for squandering county funds and resources, much as he was intending to do with his wall building scheme.

Tomorrow I will pass on what I found doing a quick search of his past behavior.