VANOVER HAD ASKED FOR RETURN OF CLERICAL ERROR
It appears the Platte County Sheriff’s Office will be keeping a disputed $315,000 that the county commisison says was mistakenly allocated to the sheriff’s department in the 2026 budget.
The apparent 2-1 decision among county commissioners not to continue the disagreement about the funds was made on Monday, with Joe Vanover, opposing the idea of allowing the sheriff’s office to keep the money. Commissioners Scott Fricker and Allyson Berberich voted in favor of budget amendments that did not involve the disputed $315,000.
Kevin Robinson, county auditor, previously admitted his office erroneously changed $35,000 to $350,000 in the final days of the budget approval process.
Robinson recently met with the sheriff about the error and on the request of at least one county commissioner, requested the sheriff to sign the documentation needed to correct the error. Holland refused to sign.
At a meeting last month, Platte County Sheriff Erik Holland had threatened to sue the county commission if they took back the $315,000 over his objection. The sheriff says once the county commission had allocated that money to his department, the commission could not legally take it back without his permission, and he would not agree to such action.
“This commission has been told since January that it does not unilaterally have the authority to take that money out of my budget. You know that taking that money out of my budget would result in $100,000 less budgeted to the sheriff’s department than in 2025. So if you want to take the stance of clerical error, which the commission has the final authority before the money is appropriated, you had multiple chances to change this clerical error, or was it your intent to cut the sheriff’s office by $100,000?” the sheriff said.
“Either way, I was not going to agree to take that money from the sheriff’s office and negatively affect the sheriff’s office. Additionally, the statement on that (proposed budget amendment) form for the reason to move the money was an outright lie, because it said it was to balance the budget, which is not accurate. The budget was balanced when it was appropriated with that money in our budget, so I wasn’t going to sign a document with a false statement and I wasn’t going to agree to give you authority that you don’t have without my consent, and to cut my budget by $100,000 f rom last year,” Holland said.
Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd stepped to the podium to ask what he called a rhetorical question.
“Why do we care if it’s a clerical error? You know, number one, that the sheriff needs that money. No. 2, you know that if he doesn’t need it you’re going to get that money back at the end of the year. If he doesn’t spend it you’ll get it back. On the eve of the World Cup, why are we fighting about this?”
Vanover said: “If you get 10 times the amount of money you are supposed to get because of a clerical error, it doesn’t matter if you think you really need the money. The right thing to do is to give it back.”
Vanover went on to say: “Erik Holland could do the right thing and sign the paperwork to fix a clerical error that made a $35,000 budget line for equipment rental into $350,000. Instead, Erik Holland is keeping a $315,000 windfall by threatening to sue.”
Fricker, presiding commissioner, questioned the sheriff’s remarks about the department’s total budget. Fricker says the sheriff’s office would still have more money in 2026 than in 2025 if it returned the $315,000.
“In fact in 2025 the sheriff’s budget was $22.7 million and in 2026 it is $29.9 million. That math doesn’t add up to me. The sheriff and the prosecutor both have more money (in their budgets) than they did in 2025,” Fricker said.
WHOSE NUMBERS
ARE CORRECT?
The Landmark spoke with auditor Robinson after the meeting to seek an explanation between the numbers spoken by the sheriff and the numbers spoken by Fricker.
Robinson said the conclusion spoken by Fricker mixed a couple of methods of financial analysis to fit the county commissioner’s narrative.
Fricker was comparing 2025 actual expenditures for the sheriff’s department ($22.8 million in 2025) to the 2026 adopted sheriff’s budget ($24.9 million).
But a more consistent comparison, Robinson said, might be the 2025 sheriff’s adopted budget of $24.715 million to the $24.9 million adopted budget for 2026, which would mean Holland’s comment that removing $315,000 from his 2026 budget would leave his department with $100,000 less than in his 2025 budget is accurate.
“Each approach in simple financial analysis offers a different perspective, depending on whether the focus is on historical performance, planned spending, or the variance between actual operations and future expectations,” Robinson said, explaining that Fricker switching methods of comparison fit the county commissioner’s narrative.
“Comparing the adopted budget from one year to the adopted budget of the next has been the approach Commissioner Fricker has used in his previous statements. However, today he appeared to shift to a third method, which is comparing prior year actual to upcoming fiscal year budget,” Robinson said.
