EUGENE, Ore. -- Incumbent Bobby Green and challenger Rob Handy are vying for a seat on the Lane County Board of Commissioners, representing the north Eugene district. 

The commission is made up of five, full-time paid board members. It is responsible for legislating and administering county government.

Individually, board members can address the needs of constituents and carry out special assignments, including performance auditing.

In the coming election, Commissioner Green faces Handy, the owner of a local landscape and consulting business.    

David Walker asked both candidates about recent cuts in the Lane County Sheriff's Office and the shortage of beds at the county jail.

Walker: What do you consider to be appropriate staffing levels for the county and how would you propose we get there? well public safety is one of my biggest priorities at the county.    

Handy: I believe we can and I insist that we can find a balance between offender accountability and services this balance and i will make sure we get that.

Walker: And do you have any specific ideas for where you would look or what kind of moves you would like to see the county make to be able to get there?

Handy: Well, we need a business sense, common sense approach to using taxpayer dollars and that involves not playing economic roullette with taxpayer money, living within our means and making sure we have the trust from the XXXXXXXXXXX

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Walker: What would you say as somebody who's been working this would be an appropriate staffing level if you will and you just talked about part of it but how do we get the county to that place?    

Green: Well, appropriate staffing level. That's a tough question because we have a 24 hour, 7 days a week operation. We don't get to pick and choose when the jail is open and when we close it.    

I would think that's really a budget issue that we have to really talk about because the hard costs on beds, keeping the offender accountable and as far as the number of deputies and correction officers, that's a hard number for me to put my finger on, but I will say this: when we can take the sign down at the county line that says you can do your crime but don't worry about the time, when we get to do that, we're in a much better situation because right now the criminals know the system better than most of the than the average person. We need to change that, and so I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we make sure we have the kind of public safety system that we deserve here.