They Forgot to Ask the Sheriff

The Cuyahoga County jail project has been stuck for nearly a year. This week, we learned at least one of the reasons a piece of it may stay stuck a while longer: the County never actually asked the sheriff if he was willing to move his office.

Cleveland.com reporter Kaitlin Durbin broke the story on April 23, 2026. Sheriff Harold Pretel told the paper this week that he has never agreed to relocate his headquarters out of downtown Cleveland to the planned Garfield Heights site — and, as far as he is concerned, he has never been formally asked.

This is not a small detail. Buried in the County’s nearly $1 billion design is a three-story sheriff’s tower to be built right next to the new jail in Garfield Heights. The entire site plan, the entire construction schedule, the entire financing case for moving the sheriff’s headquarters out of downtown was built on the assumption that the sheriff would simply be there.

What Ohio Law Actually Says

At a Public Safety and Justice Affairs Committee meeting on Tuesday, April 21, Councilwoman Sunny Simon raised the issue and pointed to the Ohio Revised Code. The relevant provision is straightforward:

The sheriff is required to maintain an office at the county seat — in our case, Cleveland — unless the sheriff consents to move it elsewhere.

That is not a gray area. That is the law. And the County, by Sheriff Pretel’s own statement, never went through the consent process.

The Pattern

I have written before about the problems with this jail project. Each one looks like an isolated mistake. Together they look like something else entirely:

• A 72-acre site in Garfield Heights that pays $0 in property tax to the city it sits in. Tax-exempt government property generates exactly zero revenue for the host community.
• A County that has been late on its required audits, in some cases by years. The State Auditor’s office has flagged this repeatedly.
• A County Council that quietly settled into four-year terms without ever asking the voters to approve the change, while keeping a pay structure that grows with longevity.
• And now: a three-story sheriff’s office, designed and on the table for months, with the sheriff himself saying nobody asked him whether he’d actually move into it.

That is not how you spend a billion dollars of public money. That is how you waste it.

What Should Happen

1. The County Council and Executive should formally request, in writing, the sheriff’s consent. Ohio law provides a path. Use it. Put it on the record. Date it.

2. If the sheriff does not consent, the design must change — or the project must wait. The voters of Cuyahoga County elected Sheriff Pretel. His judgment is part of the public record. He is not an obstacle to route around.

3. The County should publicly explain how this happened. A nearly billion-dollar project does not move forward for this many months without somebody, somewhere, raising their hand and saying “wait — has anyone asked the sheriff?” That somebody should explain why they did not.

What Residents Can Do

If you live in Cuyahoga County, the next step is the same as it has been:

• Call your County Council member. Their job description includes oversight. This is oversight.
• Show up to the next Public Safety and Justice Affairs Committee meeting. It is open to the public, and members of the public have a right to be heard.
• Ask, on the record, when the sheriff was first formally asked. Get the date in writing.

Half of Garfield Heights’ future depends on what happens next on this site. The other half depends on whether residents accept silence as an answer.

I would rather we did not.

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Source: Original reporting by Kaitlin Durbin, cleveland.com, April 23, 2026 — “Will the sheriff move? Cuyahoga’s jail plan assumes he will — but he hasn’t agreed.”