Exquisite sense of bad timing

The best that can be said at this point about Sheriff Randall Wellington's overseeing of the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department is that his timing is tortured.
We're compelled to observe this by Wellington's recent decision to assign one of his captains, James M. Lewandowski, to be commander of the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department's new emergency preparedness unit. At a time when deputies are being laid off and nearly 800 prisoners are jammed into the county jail, Wellington has assigned Lewandowski, one of his most experienced officers, to work with Walt Duzzny, the county's emergency management director, on a new initiative.
Granted, this is a decidedly better use of Lewandowski's time and talents than his assignment of the last 16 months. During that time, Wellington had Lewandowski working one-man guard duty at the Berlin and Milton dams, putting about 175 miles a night on a county cruiser. Add 50,000 miles of wear and tear on a cruiser to Lewandowski's salary, overtime and fringe benefits, and Wellington's decision to isolate Lewandowski wasted $100,000, by conservative estimate.
Dams on their own
The homeland security job that Wellington once considered so vital that he assigned a captain to do it, is, following Lewandowski's reassignment, being done by ... no one. Apparently, over the last 16 months, any threat by terrorists to the Berlin and Milton dams has evaporated.
Or perhaps Wellington simply realized that he could no longer justify the unjustifiable by assigning Lewandowski to dam duty.
Yet, for whatever reason, Wellington couldn't bring himself to bring Lewandowski in out of the proverbial cold. He couldn't abide having a man he apparently considers a political enemy or a threat to his authority in the county jail.
Lewandowski's new assignment has him working at the Mahoning County Emergency Management complex on Industrial Road. He will develop plans so that the sheriff's office will be able to respond to "disasters of unprecedented size and destructiveness."
Under normal circumstances, such forward-thinking would be welcome. But in the economic crisis facing the county today, it would be better to have Lewandowski at the county jail, ready to respond to more immediate law enforcement needs.