Officials with Jackson Hole Airport, the Town of Jackson and the Teton County Sheriff’s Office have come up with the outlines of a plan to provide law enforcement for the airport until April.

Airport Director Ray Bishop, Sheriff Bob Zimmer and Town Manager Bob McLaurin hammered out the initial details of the plan at a private meeting Tuesday. The negotiations came after Zimmer said he would pull the badges of the airport’s law enforcement officers by Dec. 1 over liability issues and other concerns.

According to McLaurin, the plan is a “stopgap” to get the airport through ski season. Under the plan, Zimmer and Jackson Police Chief Dan Zivkovich would provide the airport with law enforcement officers from their departments to the airport. The officers would fall under the direct authority of Zimmer and Zivkovich and would be paid by their respective departments.

The airport, in turn, would pay the town and sheriff’s department for the service.

“We made some progress in terms of how we’re going to handle this problem,” McLaurin said. “We intend to draft, at this point, a memorandum of understanding that is going to spell everything out.” The memorandum “will give us some time to figure out a permanent solution,” he said.

A permanent solution could involve attempts to persuade the Wyoming Legislature to give the airport the authority to have its own police officers.

Grant Larson, state senator from Jackson, said he is considering legislation that would allow Jackson Hole Airport and other Wyoming airports that fall under the scrutiny of the Transportation Security Administration to have their own police forces.

“The problem keeps coming up every year or two,” he said. “I thought it might be prudent to get the problem solved once and for all.”

Like many Wyoming lawmakers, Larson said he’s been reluctant to expand police authority in other instances, like when state parks wanted their own police. Still, he said, the issue at Jackson Hole Airport isn’t going away.

“With the TSA requirements, I think this might be the best solution,” he said. “I probably will have a bill prepared. We’ll see what happens in the meantime.”

Airport can stay open

After more meetings, McLaurin hopes to present a plan to the Town of Jackson’s elected officials some time in November, he said. Zimmer said he was pleased with the negotiations.

“I think it’s great that we have a ... direction,” he said. “We’ll try and work out the details. We are not going to close down the airport.”

Under the proposed plan, the sheriff’s duties and city police officers would not be responsible for some of the supplemental duties that the current law enforcement officers at the airport perform, including firefighting and testing the friction coefficient on the runway.

“The current agreement is that Ray Bishop will get to us a list of duties that he would like to see them perform,” Zimmer said. “The chief and I will get together and see whether the [duties on the list] are things that we would agree to.”

The proposed plan leaves the future clouded for three law enforcement officers who currently work at the airport under the sheriff’s authority. Before they started work, the airport’s officers trained at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas. The officers also have training as firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

McLaurin said it’s up to Zivkovich and Zimmer to decide whether to add the men to the police force or  sheriff’s department.

“If they’re interested in coming over, there would be a testing process, and the sheriff and the chief would decide if they want to bring them on,” he said.

Zimmer said he would consider hiring them as sheriff’s deputies for Teton County.

“We would welcome that opportunity to look at them,” he said. “I think it’s fair to them.”

Bishop called the fate of the three officers “up in the air.”

“That’s one of the open-ended items that we have to take a look at,” he said. The sheriff and the police chief “will take a look at them and see if they meet their credentials.,” he said. “I still have needs at the airport.”

Bishop called the negotiations “constructive and very helpful.”

“In my mind, there is no doubt that we have a pathway to success on the first of December,” he said. “The good news is that we’ll have an agreement and we’ll continue to serve the public through the airport.”

Teton County Commissioner Andy Schwartz attended the meeting and was positive about its outcome.

“I was pleased, because it sounds like they are going to work it out,” he said. “That, to me, was the priority.”

Last week, Grand Teton National Park officials declined to provide law enforcement support for Jackson Hole Airport. In August, Sheriff Zimmer wrote Bishop saying he would no longer certify the airport’s law enforcement officers.

Currently, the airport’s three officers work under Zimmer’s authority as sheriff’s deputies but are paid by,  and work for, the Jackson Hole Airport Board. The TSA requires a law enforcement presence at or near the airport during security screening operations.

In a letter dated Aug. 25, Zimmer said he would no longer allow the airport’s officers to wear the badge of his department as of Oct. 1.

“Even though [the airport’s law enforcement officers] were not my employees, they had the power to act in the capacity of a sheriff’s deputy,” he said. “Under the best of circumstances, this is not a particularly attractive arrangement from any sheriff’s perspective. I am not comfortable with my accountability for deputies over whom I have little or no control.”

Status quo ‘a mistake’

“Over the course of my tenure as sheriff, I have acquiesced to the wishes of the airport board in terms of maintaining the status quo,” Zimmer continued. “I was often told that if I removed the deputy status of those airport board employees, I would be responsible for ‘shutting down the airport.’ I begrudgingly agreed to have the status quo resume. However, maintaining the status quo was a mistake and continues to be a mistake.”

In a subsequent letter, dated Sept. 11, Zimmer pushed back the date to Dec. 1.

“Please know the deadline for removing deputy sheriff status from Airport Board employees on Dec. 1 is final; there will be no extension after that date.”

At the airport Sept. 23, Bishop said Wyoming law doesn’t allow airports to certify their own officers like most other states.

“In my view we should change the law,” Bishop said.

But there was little chance Wyoming lawmakers could enact the law by Dec. 1.

“This is a real dilemma for us,” Bishop said. “The TSA said that on the first of December, we’re going to decertify your airport. This is a community concern. At the end of the day, it’s the sheriff’s decision to make. He has control.”

Last week, Zimmer said the primary reason for his decision to terminate the arrangement was liability.

“It’s a situation that puts all the liability on the county and all the liability on the sheriff,” he said.

Zimmer had no authority over the officers in terms of demanding training or participation in other programs.

“We’ve got to fix this thing,” Zimmer said. “It’s been broken for the nine and a half years I’ve been in office. Ray Bishop and the airport board have done absolutely nothing to solve this problem.”

Zimmer had offered to incorporate the airport law enforcement officers into his department and to hire out officers on a contract basis. Officers in the department would rotate into the airport on a set schedule.

Teton County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jim Whalen pointed to a 2005 memorandum of agreement between the department and the airport board. Whalen said the airport has failed to follow through on a number of conditions in the agreement, including allowing Zimmer some control over the hiring and supervision of the airport’s deputies.

The memorandum of agreement also specifies that airport deputies would participate in regular training programs conducted by the department. Both Whalen and Bishop said that airport deputies have not participated in regular training exercises.

Bishop said the training from the sheriff’s department included work with traffic stops and other scenarios that aren’t applicable to the airport.

According to Whalen, Bishop said he didn’t have enough deputies to pull them away from the airport for training. He said the airport deputies stopped attending training about a year ago.

At the time, Zimmer said he had no choice but to set a deadline.

“Until I push the issue, it is going to stay the same as it always has,” he said. “I’m not shutting down anything down. This is a liability.”