ashe

Careful Your buddy Sands was under that bus

I do believe you are hot on the Rose trail.

In the link that LEO posted on the sheriff thread I saw that it says before being sworn in, a sheriff elect should determine if he holds any other public office. This made me do some quick digging.

I found an article at the school of government that has this to say

Interest in office-holding probably arose because of a provision in North Carolina's pre-1971 constitutions that allowed a person to hold only one "office or place of trust or profit" at a time. ("Office" and "place of trust or profit" have basically the same meaning.) Perhaps because of this rule's strictness, questions often arose about two issues.

A 1965 supreme court case supports this view. In that case, the court examined the question of whether police chiefs and police officers are public officers or public employees for purposes of G.S. 14-230, which deals with willful failure by public officers to discharge official duties. The court pointed out that what determines a police officer's status is "the nature and extent of his duties and responsibilities with which he is charged under the law." In language similar to that found in multiple office-holding cases, it referred to the position's creation by the sovereign power and its exercise of part of that power as distinguishing an office from employment. State v. Hord, 264 N.C. 149, 155, 141 S.E.2d 241, 245 (1965) (citation omitted). The court held that duly appointed chiefs of police, as well as police officers, are public officers rather than mere employees within the meaning of G.S. 14-230. Id.

http://canons.sog.unc.edu/w...ic-office/

I'm still reading up on this, but it looks interesting