The Oakland County Sheriff's Office, Bloomfield Township Police Department and the White Lake Township Police Department are part of the Courts and Law Enforcement Information System (CLEMIS). The system allows approximately 250 governmental agencies across 10 Michigan counties to share information in a timely manner.
According to a drafted resolution by county commission finance chairwoman Gwen Markham, CLEMIS "must be modernized to become an independent, self-sustaining operation." A video presentation shown on Wednesday to the Oakland County commissioners' finance committee said there is no current funding available to modernize CLEMIS participants' technology under the current model.
"We had a meeting with all the CLEMIS members a year and a half ago, two years ago, and we talked to all of them about these issues," Sean Carlson, deputy county executive, said.
The shift from commission oversight would coincide with how the CLEMIS authority is funded. After the $10 million in startup costs, the authority would be funded by the local governments at a rate of $500 per officer, said consultant Bo Cheng.
The commission finance committee approved a resolution 6-1 on Wednesday to create an independent CLEMIS authority. The resolution will go to the full board of commissioners for consideration. Commissioner Yolanda Smith-Charles voted against it, citing privacy concerns with no independent oversight.
“I probably will be a ‘yes’ next week, but just for the next seven or so days, I just want to marinate a little bit more, so I’m maybe leaning ‘yes,'" Smith-Charles said.
“From my perspective, my township would have never allowed us to do this if they thought we were going to use this data inappropriately," said Bloomfield Township Police Chief Jim Gallagher.
Commission chairman Dave Woodward said he isn't concerned about the CLEMIS system getting misused under the new model. He also said the authority would give its members a greater ability to ask for upgrades from their local governments.
"Going back to your communities, there’s a lot of trust. Like if the police chief of Bloomfield Township says, ‘This is what we need to do and this is why it costs this,’ the Bloomfield Township board is going to be very responsive and go, ‘Yes, and this is what we’re going to figure out how to pay for it,'" Woodward said.
If passed by the full commission on Thursday, the authority will immediately receive $250,000 from the county for startup costs and then $9.75 million on Feb. 1.
The move to reorganize the CLEMIS structure comes roughly two months after four Oakland County employees were disciplined for violating the county's conflict of interest rules in connection with the partnership. The discipline came after the county awarded Zaydlogix, a company run by a county employee, a $450,000 contract to provide tech workers to CLEMIS.
At the meeting, Woodward noted that no money had been paid out to the vendor. Carlson said an investigation into the incident will be shared with county commissioners in the coming weeks.
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