Platte County Sheriff Erik Holland has threatened to sue the Platte County Commission for moving funds already allocated through the budgeting process.
The latest confrontation between officeholders came at the Monday, March 23 administrative session of the commission, when Auditor Kevin Robinson requested commissioners approve a public hearing for Monday, April 6 to discuss and potentially approve budget amendments.
Holland came to the podium and accused the commission of directing Robinson to remove $315,000 from his budget. District Commissioner Joe Vanover spoke up, saying the amendment was requested because of a typo made by the auditor’s office and did not reflect an actual cut to the sheriff’s budget. A line item that was supposed to be for $35,000 was mistakenly published as $350,000. Vanover said he caught the error and reported it to Robinson.
“So, my request was that we fix that typo,” Vanover said. “That’s all it was, was a $315,000 typo, an error by Kevin Robinson.”
Holland said the supposed typo and changes made to the budget could cost his department more than $100,000.
“I have said repeatedly that you do not have the legal authority to move money out of a budget that has been appropriated based on the scenarios that are before us and I’ll put you on notice right now Commissioner Vanover that if the commission proceeds with something that it has been told repeatedly you don’t have legal authority to do you will leave me no choice but to sue the county commission, and I believe the action retaliatory and I’ll notify the attorney general as such,” Holland said.
“They are not retaliatory, they’re to correct an error,” Vanover said.
Holland said it was an error that had been known about since January, but it only became an issue after Holland and Zahnd aired their concerns about the commission’s budget.
Later in the meeting, Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd spoke, again bringing up the funds the sheriff says could be cut from his department budget.
During closing comments, Vanover said Zahnd has been lying to the public, and that Holland has stood by his side while he does it. Vanover said that when he was elected in 2020 the budgets for the sheriff and prosecutor were $11.3 million and $1.7 million, respectively. By 2026, those budgets were $24.9 million and $3.4 million, respectively.
“This wildly erroneous claim that we cut $600,000 is just lying to the public and Eric Zahnd has lied to the public enough and I can’t stand it anymore and Erik Holland has stood shoulder to shoulder with Zahnd as he lies to the public about slashing law enforcement funding,” Vanover said. “It’s just not true. Every year you get more – this year, you got more in the budget.”