Nantucket County Sheriff Jim Perelman’s office did not properly handle the administration of civil process from July 2018 through June 2020, according to a review conducted by State Auditor Suzanne Bump.
The audit determined that the Nantucket County Sheriff’s Department lacked segregation of duties, defined roles and 
management oversight in serving civil process such as eviction notices, court-ordered child support, landlord-tenant disputes, and sheriff sales of real estate in foreclosure. Perelman’s office “did not always record and collect fees for services provided,” and also did not always completely fill out the civil process spreadsheet required by the state.
Perelman said Friday that the audit was part of the state’s regular review of all departments and sheriffs’ offices, and acknowledged the errors cited in Bump’s report.
“My office hasn’t been audited since I’ve been here, and I got elected at the end of 2010,” Perelman said. “They found a few mistakes, a few errors. But I think they always find errors in everybody. I say shame on them for waiting 11 years to audit my office. But they found stuff wrong? Absolutely.”
Perelman said he was already beginning to implement the State Auditor’s recommendations, including moving to electronic spreadsheets and going completely online with civil process. With regard to not always collecting fees for services provided, Perelman said there were some cases in which he used his judgment and knowledge of the community in deciding to waive fees.
“At my discretion I have waived fees for some people,” Perelman said. “The reason I do that is I know most of the people who are getting served. It’s not because they’re my friends, some people may have a deadbeat tenant who hasn’t paid them in three years and they’re owed back rent and I say, ‘they need the $45 more than my office needs the $45’.”
The fees collected for civil process – roughly $10,000 to $12,000 annually – are distributed back into the community by Perelman through grants to nonprofits like A Safe Place and Fairwinds Counseling Center.
The Nantucket County Sheriff’s office is by far the smallest in the state, and the only one in Massachusetts that does not operate a jail or correctional facility. The island’s sheriff office has a small staff of three full-time employees and some part-time staffers, and its primary duty is transporting prisoners to and from the Barnstable County Correctional Facility.
That small staff makes delegating specific duties solely to one employee a challenge, yet that was one of the findings of the audit.
“A bigger department has so many different offices each doing something,” Perelman said. “Am I guilty of it? I plead guilty, but because there are only two people doing clerical work in the office, I don’t see a way around it.”
