By Mike Gervais
Register Staff
9-22-2009

Inyo County has eliminated the budget for the position of county marshal, thereby deleting the elected position altogether.
Which comes as news to Floyd Barton, the Big Pine resident who was elected to serve as Inyo County marshal in 2008.
Barton is now crying foul, saying the board cannot eliminate an elected position without a county resolution or some kind of community input – despite the fact County Administrative Officer Kevin Carunchio and the Board of Supervisors assert the state actually eliminated the position several years ago when it consolidated the court system.
The elimination of the position saves the county $2,187 a year. Barton, who receives a salary of $22 a month, says he doesn’t do the job for the money.
“There are set procedures other counties have followed to eliminate this position,” Barton said. “You can’t take an elected office and say it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s not my decision as marshal to decide if we need one, that’s up to the citizens to decide.”
But the county says it didn’t take any such action.
“The county didn’t really eliminate it,” said County Counsel Randy Keller. “What we’re doing is recognizing the reality of what the legislature had done in 2002. To create or eliminate a law enforcement position is beyond what we can do.”
According to the county, back in the early 1990s, California consolidated the state Justice Courts and the Municipal Courts and the constable position officially became the marshal position when the County Justice Court became the Municipal Court.

In the early 2000s, the state decided to consolidate the municipal and superior courts, eliminating the marshal’s position in county government.

Floyd Barton

According to Keller, most counties in California absorbed their marshals into the Sheriff’s Department. Keller also said that any marshal who was serving when the 2002 consolidation occurred “was grandfathered in” and kept his or her position until the next election.
The position of marshal was vacated in 2007 when longtime Marshal Don Lynch died in office. Barton was elected to the position in 2008, long after the county claims that the state had dissolved the role of a marshal in state and county government.
Keller said the marshal position “probably shouldn’t have gone on the ballot” in 2008, because the position had already been eliminated.
It is the county’s position, said Inyo County Superior Court Judge Dean Stout, “that you cannot be elected to a position that does not exist.”
Inyo County Clerk Recorder Mary Roper said that she is unsure what the process is to remove an elected position from a ballot, and was unaware that the position of marshal had been eliminated at the state level.
She also said that the issue about the elected marshal’s position being eliminated brings up questions about the pending consolidation of Bishop schools, and what will happen with the 10 seated board members there.
Most counties passed resolutions either eliminating the position or incorporating it into the Sheriff’s Department when the court consolidation took place.
Roper said that she did ask the County Counsel’s Office whether the marshal’s position was a county office or a judicial office prior to the 2008 election, but was referred to Judge Dean Stout.
The position was labeled as a judicial office on the ballot.
Stout noted that the marshal, which has been an agent of the court since its inception in Inyo County in 1868, “has not and does not provide services to the court. The constable or marshal has never provided services to Inyo courts.”
During his term as marshal, Lynch used his position to work with private attorneys, serving notices to appear in court to local residents.
Traditionally, county counsel and the District Attorney’s Office have used the Sheriff’s Department for that function.
That’s why Barton said the position of marshal is an important one.
“The whole purpose of the constable and marshal is that it is separate from the Sheriff’s Department.”
Barton said that, for one reason or another, many residents may not want to work with the Sheriff’s Department and having a marshal position available, “you don’t have that kind of conflict of interest.”
Barton said he hopes to generate dialogue between county residents and the Board of Supervisors regarding the elimination of the marshal’s position.
“I’m not going to let the county bureaucracy ignore the citizens it’s supposed to serve,” Barton said. “I’m disappointed the Board of Supervisors would even consider this – it’s an absolute insult and it really makes me sad.
“I’m going to continue to provide the services to the citizens of the county to the best of my ability. If they’re going to eliminate this position, they’re going to have to go through the proper channels.”