‘You can’t just make stuff up’: Prosecutor accuses county of contradicting its own 2022 opinion on sheriff’s powers

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A resurfaced 2022 legal opinion is complicating Cuyahoga County’s fight over who controls the sheriff’s fiscal staff, dividing the prosecutor and county executive on whether the administration’s latest guidance contradicts its own conclusions from three years ago.

The earlier opinion – written by then-Law Director Greg Huth under Executive Armond Budish’s administration – concluded that the sheriff had the authority to run his own internal human resources division, independent from the county’s central HR office. It repeatedly emphasized the sheriff’s independence under the county charter and warned that the executive could not exercise “unfettered control” over sheriff’s employees without undermining the amendment voters approved in 2019 to give the sheriff more au