Letter: Sheriff’s wife should not be solicitor
Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner’s wife wants to be our next solicitor. Angela McCall-Tanner wants us to believe her being solicitor would not conflict with her husband being sheriff. I disagree.
The sheriff and solicitor do not always agree on the handling of criminal cases, so at times they are supposed to disagree. Furthermore, occasionally a police officer is at fault and the solicitor needs to make judgment on those cases as well. Certainly her decisions could be influenced by her marriage to the sheriff and therefore her election would be a clear conflict of interest.
McCall-Tanner also calls into question the integrity of our current solicitor as being too politically motivated due to his length of office. Her logic wreaks of hypocrisy since our sheriff has been in office twice as long as our solicitor. Using her logic we need a new sheriff as well. On this point I agree. Let’s end the terms of these elected people having excessive years in office and the associated power it derives.
Wes Breinich
Hilton Head Island
This story was originally published May 6, 2016 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Letter: Sheriff’s wife should not be solicitor."