Each Thursday, we put one of our local newsmakers On The Spot.

This week: Cayuga County Sheriff David Gould

This week's question: How do you respond to people who believe party politics is continuing to cause strife among the staff of the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office?

I feel the answer to this question is truly simple. As far as I am concerned there are no party politics that are causing any strife at our county Sheriff's Office.

I know there are a few people in our community that believe that Jim Langler's personnel matter is due to politics and last years sheriff's election. The incident that precipitated this matter took place in the spring of 2006, six months before the election and eight months before I took office.

This incident was not from the beginning and is still not being handled by myself or my administration. From the beginning of my administration I respectfully asked the Cayuga County legislative chairman, the county manager, the county attorney and the county labor relations specialist to assign another county department head to administratively oversee this case.

This was requested in order to eliminate the sheriff's department involvement because we did not want our department involved in any political aspect of this ongoing matter.

I hope the citizens of our county understand that their sheriff's department and its dedicated members want this matter settled as fairly and as soon as possible.

I truly believe the working conditions among all of the different departments of our sheriff's department have improved immensely. Since Jan. 1, our new administration has successfully completed 34 new accomplishments for our membership. Some of these improvements involve upgrading the fire codes at the Public Safety Building to opening the Moravia Substation and to soon be opening the new Cato Substation. The proof that the morale of the membership has improved is by asking a member of our great police organization.

We who work at the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office, whether it be in the Custody Division, the Road Patrol, Civil, Court Security, County Office Building Security or the Boat Patrol, just want to be able to do our jobs, without worrying about any aspects pertaining to politics.

We have all taken a sworn oath to serve and protect our citizens and that is what we want to do. I, as sheriff of our great county, have said in the past and will continue to say, that the sheriff should be above politics. I've never wanted to be a politician; I want to be an administrative police officer, who treats all the citizens of our county and all the employees of our sheriff's department with dignity and respect.