County Watch
by G. L. Penney

 A few days ago, as I visited in Burger King with Tom Beauter, a former Tioga County Sheriff, we remembered that his immediate predecessor at one time had only one patrol car in service. I remembered that my first encounter with local government was my request to increase the sheriff's budget. The board of supervisors had voted to do so even before I was out of the building. I later visited with the then sheriff and he told me that he had written the State Office for Local Government and that they had recommended that his staff - less than six at that time - be increased to twenty, an almost unthinkable number at that time. About that same time, there was a move afoot to limit the sheriff's jurisdiction to managing the jail and let the state police patrol the county. How times have changed! 

 Today the sheriff's force is several time that once recommended number of twenty. We taxpayers pay literally millions of dollars per year for the sheriff's road patrol even though the county's population is about the same as then. 
 
Today the county legislature will hardly listen to any proposal to reduce that expense.