California State Auditor Elaine Howell says Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones should be charged with a crime. Jones says Howell is getting bad legal advice.
The back and forth began after Assemblyman Kevin McCarty of Sacramento asked for an audit of concealed weapons permit programs in the state.
The auditor's office completed the audit in early December 2017 and sent preliminary findings to Jones. He then posted some of the findings on Facebook and through the department's media division.
Howell posted the audit two days later and then sent letters to the Attorney General's office and to Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
Howell say Jones social media reactions to the preliminary findings constitutes a misdemeanor. She says details of a report, by law, can't be made public until the audit is published. In the letter to Schubert she wrote, "it is critically important that the state laws requiring confidentiality be strictly enforced."
Now, Jones has fired back. In a letter to Howell, he writes, "Since the collective acumen of your legal staff has thus far been unimpressive, I will try and assist you in arriving at the correct conclusion" and then states he is under no legal requirement to be mum about an audit of which his department was the subject. He is demanding a retraction.
The audit found Sacramento, San Diego, and Los Angeles counties failed to follow all of their policies and procedures with regards to concealed weapons permits.
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