SULLIVAN'S SALVOS
October 13, 2025
Sullivan’s Salvos 10/16/25
In this edition:
*Harvest
*COVID and Flu Shots
*Workday
*Posse Comitatus
*Did You Know?
*Harvest
The harvest season is upon us. It is a beautiful time of year, but it can also be dangerous. There is a lot of large, slow-moving equipment on the roads. Please be careful and leave a little extra time.
*COVID and Flu Shots
Fall is upon us, and there are many opportunities now for you to get updated COVID and flu shots. PLEASE do so! I got mine!
Yes, I wish these shots were still free; our healthcare system never fails to frustrate me. But PLEASE take advantage of these opportunities. You may well be making a decision that saves your life, and/or the lives of others.
*Workday
Johnson County recently went live with Workday, a platform for managing HR, Capital, and Finances. Workday is used by thousands of entities around the world, and comes highly recommended.
Implementing Workday is the type of thing that has been a *very* big deal to County employees, but if our implementation continues to go well (so far, so good!) the public will never know anything happened.
Workday essentially takes a lot of the daily tasks of HR and Finance and moves them from paper to online. It is going to ultimately save Johnson County a lot of time and money, and many employees will see processes that used to take them a couple hours each week reduced to minutes. In addition, it makes all sorts of data readily available; something we have been sorely lacking.
Upfront, however, has been a huge investment of time and money. My sincere thanks to the folks who have led this charge, and my thanks to the County employees who have had to adapt to new ways of doing things. It is going to be a very good thing for taxpayers once we get it fully implemented.
*Posse Comitatus
You may have heard news reports lately that mention Posse Comitatus. Unfortunately, this law is back in the news due to the illegal actions of President Trump. There is also an interesting local twist, which I will get to a bit later.
First, some background: Posse Comitatus is Latin for the “Power of the County.” The Posse Comitatus Act was signed into US law in 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The act limits the power of government to use the military in law enforcement efforts.
The origin of Posse Comitatus goes back to the period of Reconstruction. In the wake of the Civil War, some southern groups used violence and intimidation to suppress the vote among newly freed African Americans. President Grant sent the US Army to various locations to see to it that voting could go on unimpeded. Much of the former Confederacy was “occupied” by federal troops during elections.
And those elections, held under the watchful eye of the US military, resulted in a wave of African American elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels. Over 1,500 African American men, most former slaves, served in public office at all levels of government, holding positions from local sheriff to U.S. Congress. Key figures included Hiram Revels, the first Black U.S. Senator, and Robert Smalls, who served multiple terms in the House of Representatives. But this would be short lived.
In 1876, the Presidential election was a dead heat between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes appeared to have won the popular vote, but there were many tales of election fraud. (Sound familiar?) Tilden appeared to have won in the Electoral College, but 4 states sent two opposing groups of electors to the event. (Sound familiar?) The country appeared to be headed for another Civil War, just 11 years after the end of the last one.
So operatives from both political parties began negotiating. Ultimately, Democrats agreed to allow Hayes the Presidency, but in exchange for an end to federal troops overseeing Reconstruction. The Republicans agreed, and basically started the Jim Crow era that lasted another 90 years.
One more thing happened to bring about Posse Comitatus. In 1877 Republican President Hayes used federal troops to end the Great Railroad Strike. Southern Democrats did not want to see federal troops interfering with their racial supremacy. Northern Democrats did not want to see federal troops used to put down the growing Labor Movement. Though northern and southern Democrats did not agree on much, they agreed that the military needed to stay out of domestic politics. So when Democrats took the House and Senate in 1878, there was broad support to pass what became the Posse Comitatus Act.
There have been a couple exceptions made to Posse Comitatus in US history. President Eisenhower used an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, derived from the Enforcement Acts, to send federal troops into Little Rock during the 1957 school desegregation crisis. The Arkansas governor had opposed desegregation after the US Supreme Court ruled in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The Enforcement Acts, among other powers, allowed the president to call up military forces when state authorities were either unable or unwilling to suppress violence that was in opposition to the citizens' constitutional rights.
Very recently, the lawsuit Newsom v. Trump raised constitutional challenges under the Posse Comitatus Act in response to the domestic deployment of U.S. Marines and National Guard troops in California. On September 2, federal judge Charles Breyer ruled that the federal deployment of the National Guard in California violated the Posse Comitatus Act and issued an injunction against it.
So Posse Comitatus is in the news. Interestingly, Johnson County had its own Posse Comitatus discussions back around 2010. As you might recall, 2010 was the height of the Tea Party movement, and the Board of Supervisors began getting hate mail from some county residents. Some of this mail claimed that Posse Comitatus had been violated.
Frankly, I never understood this. We had no federal military presence. None. I spoke at length to County Attorney Janet Lyness about this, and all we could discern was that the complaining citizens did not understand the law.
Meanwhile, some of them sent letters to the Treasurer and Supervisors claiming they were not going to pay property taxes in protest of this. (In the end, they all paid.) We got other letters that were vaguely threatening that mentioned Posse Comitatus as well. Again, the reference did not really make sense, but the threats seemed real enough.
The Sheriff and Chief Deputy met with Elected Officials to copy records and create files. We were all a bit more cautious. The Sheriff’s Office only knew of two people for sure who were involved, but they were trying to determine just how deep things went. There were a couple handwriting samples that were clearly the same people. It seemed to be focused on just a handful of people who lived south of Oxford and north of Kalona, though another participant lived on the east side of the county.
Finally, things came to a head at a county meeting. There was a large Pubic Hearing on changes to the Zoning Code. The changes caused a lot of anger in the ag community, though I think the opposition was ridiculous.
The opposition centered on Johnson County instituting a Property Maintenance Code. This required property owners to meet some very basic health and safety standards for rural homes. We said it would rarely be used, and it rarely has been. In retrospect, it has been a very good rule change. It went exactly as we said it would.
But the people in the room that night felt otherwise. And one guy in particular said he was going to take action himself to make sure Supervisors did not vote for this code change. Luckily, a Sheriff’s Deputy was in attendance. He removed the person from the meeting.
As it happened, this guy was one of the two main Posse Comitatus leaders. In the wake of this meeting, the Sheriff’s Office went door to door to the handful of people they knew to be members. They explained that they knew who the Posse Comitatus members were, that threats were unacceptable, and that the Sheriff’s Office would be watching them.
The threats stopped. One of the people in question moved away. And we never heard anything else about Posse Comitatus.
I still don’t understand how they arrived at that name for their group. It never made any sense, and still doesn’t. But I certainly do recall the threats. And I definitely was reminded of that era as I hear Posse Comitatus being invoked in DC, LA, and Chicago. The current Posse Comitatus violations are probably the most significant breach of law by a President in our nations history!
*DID YOU KNOW? The willful use of federal military forces for civilian law enforcement is a federal crime under the Posse Comitatus Act.
Anyone interested in learning more about County government should take a look at the County website-
"Sullivan’s Salvos" is sent once per week to any interested party. It will give a brief update on issues of interest to Johnson County residents.
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---Rod
posted by Rod Sullivan @ 9:50 AM
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