Mark Walter of Elmwood Township this week officially filed paperwork to put his name on the Aug. 5 Primary ballot to seek the Republican nomination for Leelanau County Sheriff.

COUNTY COMMISSIONER Mark
Walter is officially a Republican
candidate for Sheriff.

Walter had earlier announced his intention to unseat incumbent Sheriff Mike Oltersdorf, also a Republican, but delayed filing until hearing from the federal Office of Special Counsel about the possible impact of the federal Hatch Act on his candidacy.

Provisions of the act sometimes prevent people whose jobs rely on federal funding from running for partisan political office. Walter is an incumbent member of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners, representing District No. 2, and is currently employed as a lieutenant by the Michigan Department of Corrections as a shift commander at the Pugsley Correctional Facility.

Walter said he’d heard verbally from federal attorneys that his candidacy for sheriff would not be affected by the Hatch Act; and he did not want to wait for written verification before filing paperwork to run.

As a candidate for the Sheriff’s office, Walter cannot run for re-election to his seat on the county board. He said this week he did not know who would run to fill his seat on the county board, but that he’d talked to a number of potential candidates, both Republicans and Democrats.

“I’m just hoping someone competent will step forward to run for my seat on the county board, and I don’t really care that much whether they’re a Republican or a Democrat,” Walter said.

In a press release formally announcing his candidacy for the Sheriff’s office, Walter said that as a county commissioner he’d been able to observe how the Sheriff’s office had been run over the past six years.

Walter said he’d “observed the Sheriff’s department overages grow larger, jail administration flounder, and the cost of employee grievances and law suits increase tremendously.”

Walter added: “Recent actions of eavesdropping by the sheriff do nothing to enhance the Office of the Sheriff or the morale or productivity of his (Oltersdorf’s) staff.”

Asked to comment on Walter’s statements, Oltersdorf responded that county commissioners such as Walter are also members of the “county team,” are sworn to serve the public and must share their ideas and recommendations with other members of the county team.

“To withhold ideas for the sake of a political agenda is unacceptable,” Oltersdorf said. “To attack the current jail operation and staff without offering an alternative plan is called political rhetoric. Mr. Walter has never set foot into the Sheriff’s Office to discuss these issues with the Sheriff, Undersheriff, or Jail Commander,” Oltersdorf said.

The Sheriff added that his department generated $720,000 in revenues in 2007, and Leelanau County has been named the sixth safest place to live in the entire United States.