Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Civil Service Employment Rules topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Berkeley County commission reviews proposed revisions to deputy-sheriff hiring rules
Summary
At a July 1 special meeting, the Berkeley County Deputy Sheriff Civil Service Commission discussed addendum RR2026005 to Article 2, proposing to remove a distinction for previously certified officers and to make employment-language gender-neutral; no formal vote appears in the transcript excerpt.
BERKELEY COUNTY — The Berkeley County Deputy Sheriff Civil Service Commission met in a special session at 4 p.m. on July 1, 2026, to consider proposed amendments to Article 2 of its rules and regulations aimed at changing hiring requirements and language about certification and pronouns.
Commissioner Wilson, who led the discussion of addendum RR2026005, said the amendment would "completely revise the requirements for employment" and remove language that previously distinguished between certified and noncertified applicants. "We just changed that to say authority to certify a new applicant as having completed all requirements," Wilson said, adding the revision also replaces gendered pronouns ("he, she") with gender-neutral language.
The revisions under review were drafted after the commission adopted rules on Feb. 18, 2026, and were directed for reconsideration at the commission's June 17, 2026 regular meeting. The agenda listed a single item, Issue 202625 (Article 2 proposed revision updates); the first addendum discussed was RR2026005.
Wilson described the changes as largely editorial in nature — word changes to clarify authority and modernize pronoun usage — but said one explicit policy change is the removal of a clause that separated "previously certified law enforcement applicant" from other applicants. "We changed the rules to show there's no delineation between someone that's been certified or not certified," Wilson said.
He also reviewed a change to Section 2 (notice of vacancy) that edits the sheriff's duty to notify the commission when a deputy-sheriff position becomes vacant, describing it as a wording change to clarify the notification requirement.
For the record, a participant noted Commissioner Steven V was present by phone and other commissioners were in the room. The excerpted transcript ends during discussion of the notice-of-vacancy wording; no formal motion or vote on RR2026005 is recorded in the provided segments.
Next steps were not recorded in the excerpt supplied; the commission had three addendums on the agenda for this item and the commission indicated it would go through the sections sequentially.
