I do not support ICE in the way it is currently conducting immigration enforcement. Let me be clear and unequivocal about that before I explain the rest, because the rest is where it gets complicated.

The reality is that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and the federal government has both a legal mandate and significant, and growing, resources and political support to carry it out. Local law enforcement cannot prohibit or prevent federal agencies from operating. Pretending otherwise would be dishonest. At the same time, our community includes immigrant families who have lived, worked, and integrated here for years,they are our neighbors and friends, and there is deep sympathy here for their situation. My personal political views on this are one thing. The operational duty of the Sheriff is another, and that duty is not negotiable: the office exists to protect every person in Grand County. That includes immigrants, including those here unlawfully, who still retain the protections of the U.S. Constitution.

So my position is practical. Rather than make promises the office has no power to keep, I believe Grand County must prepare, training our deputies and supervisors on exactly what we can and cannot lawfully do when and if ICE arrives. If ICE comes with a warrant signed by a judge, the county's role is to support the agency's safety and security, but not to carry out its mission for it. If ICE instead conducts an indiscriminate roundup without judicial warrants, our role is to stand by, monitor, and protect people's rights, ensuring, for example, that private spaces are not entered without a judge-signed warrant, and documenting any mistreatment for later follow-up. I'll say plainly that in its current operations, ICE too often walks the line of constitutional protection, and in my view has at times exceeded its constitutional authority. The Sheriff cannot stop federal action. What the Sheriff can do is protect this community and safeguard everyone's rights throughout it,and that is exactly what I will do.

Yes. I support building a new public safety facility for Grand County, and I support a responsible mechanism to pay for it. My concerns are not with whether we do this,they are with how it has been handled.

The need is real and not in dispute. The Sheriff's Office facilities are genuinely substandard, with documented deficiencies and real liability exposure. And the funding tool on the table,the 0.3% fixed guideway sales tax,is a sound approach: roughly 70–80% of it would be borne by visitors rather than residents, and it would generate close to $2 million a year while exempting gas and unprepared food. I agree with the Commission's desire to move forward. Where I strongly disagree is with the messaging, which has been poor. The public has been told very little about what the building actually is, who it would house, what functions it would serve, or what it will cost,and a large share of the responsibility for that communication rests with the Sheriff's Office, which has been largely absent from it. If any governing body is going to ask the public for new revenue, it owes the public transparency and clarity in return.

I'll offer a contrast. When I visited Iron County, I saw a jurisdiction that held some 25 public hearings and ran a serious outreach effort before advancing a roughly $100 million facility,and as a result, that project enjoys broad community support. It isn't a perfect comparison, since Iron County's project is largely a corrections facility offset by state inmate funding. But the lesson holds: process and communication build trust, and the absence of them breeds frustration. Right now the work in Grand County is happening inside a Commission subcommittee, commissioners, the Sheriff, and staff, with no public participation and only meeting minutes coming out. That is not the right approach. If elected, my commitment is straightforward: I will be transparent with the public about what this building is, what it costs, and who it serves, before we ask anyone to pay for it.

Consolidating law enforcement services is not the Sheriff's decision to make. That authority rests with elected city and county leadership, not with me, and not with any sheriff. I want that to be the first thing people hear, because a great deal of anxiety on this issue rests on a basic misunderstanding of who actually holds the power to do it.

Here is what I do believe: consolidation, done right, can produce real efficiencies, cost savings, better communication, and stronger operations. I know this directly, because I founded the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake, which merged the county sheriff's office with several municipalities and achieved exactly those goals. But I also learned firsthand that these models are only as durable as the political will behind them. Cities tend to join when they're under fiscal pressure and to leave when revenues recover or leadership changes, because communities understandably value local control. That makes any such model inherently tentative, it is held together by the choices of city councils and county commissions, not by a sheriff.

Practically, no consolidation can happen here unless the Moab City Council and Mayor and the Grand County Commission all choose to (a) explore it, (b) open their finances and operations to full transparency, and (c) approve it through a legally binding agreement. On top of that, state statute does not guarantee that the Sheriff would even lead a consolidated agency. So my answer is this: as a philosophy, I support pursuing efficiencies wherever they genuinely exist. As a practical matter, it is far more complicated, and it is not within the Sheriff's power to impose. I'm aware that some people, have characterized consolidation as "my agenda." It is not. I have no authority to consolidate anything. If the community wants to talk about it, I'm glad to share my experience honestly. But no officer or employee should fear that this election decides the future of their department, because that decision was never the Sheriff's to make.

No. I support keeping a standalone public safety answering point, our 911 dispatch center, here in Grand County, provided we can run it effectively and sustainably.

Some background: Grand County currently operates its own dispatch center out of the Sheriff's Office. There are regional alternatives, consolidated centers managed by the Utah Department of Public Safety, such as the one in Price that San Juan County recently joined,and those models carry real pros and cons. Dispatch is one of the most technical, expensive, and hard-to-staff functions in all of public safety, and it is also one of the most critical: every 911 call has to be routed correctly and answered by someone able to respond quickly and capably, whether the caller is in a car accident, a medical emergency, or a domestic assault. The most common worry about losing local dispatch is that out-of-area dispatchers won't know our geography. Modern technology, Next Generation 911 and ANI/ALI location systems, addresses much of that with accurate location data, and the truly hard cases, like backcountry rescues where callers don't know where they are, are difficult regardless of where dispatch is housed.

What I will not do is allow a substandard dispatch operation. These are the people on the front line when someone calls in screaming for help, and putting them in that seat without the right tools fails both them and the public. If we keep dispatch local, we have to be honest and prepared about paying for it, and that is a public discussion, not a back-room one. My first step would be to evaluate the system thoroughly, drawing on my own experience managing the second-largest communications center in the state along with outside experts, and to consult the community before any decision is made. But my preference is clear: keep it here, and do it right.