Pat Dollard

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Arizona Republic:

The risk of the federal government suing Sheriff Joe Arpaio has passed — at least for another week — but Maricopa County administrators fear the sheriff’s refusal to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation could put the county at risk of losing more than $100 million in federal funds.

Representatives for Arpaio and the Justice Department are scheduled to meet next week in Washington, D.C., to discuss the impasse and no legal action will be filed before that meeting.

In the meantime, county officials worry the fight over records could jeopardize its pot of federal funding. Last year, the county received $113 million in funding from the federal government, according to county records, and the Sheriff’s Office received $3.8 million of that total.

Investigators with the Department of Justice do not have the power to compel Arpaio to turn over documents related to their civil-rights probe in Maricopa County, but the Justice Department can use the threat of pulling federal funds to encourage reluctant agencies to cooperate.

A letter from the Justice Department to the Sheriff’s Office earlier this month threatened legal action if Arpaio refused to cooperate with the investigation, and gave the sheriff an Aug. 17 deadline to comply.

The federal civil-rights probe is not related to a separate federal abuse-of-power investigation of Arpaio’s office that has been the subject of grand-jury testimony.

When the Justice Department announced its civil-rights probe in March 2009, it came with a letter indicating there were actually two investigations taking place: one dealing with access to services for county jail inmates who don’t speak English well, the other dealing with racial profiling on the street.

The parties involved still cannot agree on which parts of the civil-rights investigation concern conditions in the jails and which deal with the street-level enforcement. The work of sheriff’s deputies has led to claims of racial profiling when Arpaio conducts immigration-enforcement operations.

Federal funds are only given to the county if they promise to follow Title VI rules, a statute for discrimination, said county Finance Director Shelby Scharbach.

“That’s just not tolerable that we’d lose all that money just for failure to turn over records,” County Manager David Smith. “It’s not something we could backhoe with existing resources. Things that are supported by those dollars would just disappear, to a large extent. And for what? Just to hang on to some records?”

The federal money helps fund dozens of programs throughout the county, such as a nutrition program for women and children, an energy assistance program for low-income families, and healthcare for the homeless. Given the county’s slumping revenues, a loss of $113 million would be devastating, county officials said.