On a split vote of the Platte County Commission Monday, funds allegedly mistakenly allocated to the sheriff’s office will stay with the sheriff’s office.
Last month, Platte County Sheriff Erik Holland threatened to sue the Platte County Commission for moving funds already allocated through the budgeting process. On Monday, April 6, auditor Kevin Robinson requested commissioners approve budget amendments. One potential amendment that was removed from the docket was a $315,000 line item. That amendment was requested by District Commissioner Joe Vanover because of a typo made by the auditor’s office and Vanover said it did not reflect an actual cut to the sheriff’s budget. A line item that was supposed to be for $35,000 for equipment rental was mistakenly published as $350,000. Vanover said he caught the error and reported it to Robinson, requesting it be corrected.
While Robinson did complete the paperwork for the correction, Holland refused to sign it. Holland said last month that the supposed typo and changes made to the budget could cost his department more than $100,000.
Vanover asked Robinson if he had met with the sheriff and asked him to sign the document.
“We did,” Robinson said, and Vanover pressed him for details on the meeting, which Robinson said he would prefer to defer to legal counsel. “It was a very pleasant conversation but the sheriff did not agree to it.”
Holland took the podium after the exchange.
“This commission has been told since January it does not unilaterally have the authority to take that money out of my budget,” Holland said. “You know that taking that money out of my budget would result in $100,000 less budgeted to the sheriff’s office than we were in 2025. So if you want to take the stance of clerical error, which, the commission, as you have pointed out from this bench, has final authority before the budget is appropriated, you had multiple chances to change this clerical error, or was it that your intent was to cut the sheriff’s office by $100,000? I don’t know. Either way, I was not going to agree to just take that money out of the sheriff’s office and negatively affect our operations.”
He also said the reason on the form for making the correction said “to balance the budget.” He called that an outright lie.
“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,” Holland said. “I wasn’t going to agree to give you authority that you didn’t have without my consent and to cut our budget $100,000 from last year.”
Vanover responded to Holland at the meeting and later in the day released a statement reiterating his comments.
“If the bank makes a mistake, and a one thousand dollar deposit turns into $10,000, you let the bank fix the mistake,” Vanover said. “If you earn $25 dollars an hour and your employer makes a mistake and pays you $250 per hour, you give the money back. If you get ten 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. 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.”
The amendments – not including the change to the sheriff’s budget – were approved on a two-to-one vote, with Vanover voting no.
At the end of the meeting, Presiding Commissioner Scott Fricker, who voted yes, added his comments.
“The sheriff made the comment that if we took back the $315,000 that was mistakenly given to the sheriff’s office, his budget would be $100,000 less than 2025,” Fricker said. “First of all, the $315,000 was a mistake. If it had been $3 million dollars, would the sheriff still have been able to keep it? Or $30 million dollars, would the sheriff still have been able to keep it? What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. Keeping a $315,000 mistake is wrong, and in fact, if we would have taken that $315,000 back, the sheriff’s budget would not be less than the 2025 numbers, and in fact, in 2025 the sheriff spent $22.7 million dollars. The 2026 approved budgwet is $24.9 million dollars. That is $2.2 million dollars more than he spent in 2025. So I don’t know how he figures if he loses $300,000 he would be $100,000 less than 2025. That math doesn’t add up to me.”
Last month, Holland said the error only became an issue after Holland and Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd aired their concerns about the commission’s budget.
Fricker also addressed that briefly.
“The constant discussion of the commission defunding law enforcement it absolutely false,” Fricker said. “It always has been and it’s just a red herring to avoid us talking about other important things.”