Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills is back in the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association.
Almost five years since he tendered his resignation to the association, the members of the GSA Board of Directors sent Putnam’s longest-recorded serving sheriff a letter inviting him back into their membership.
“It has now been five years since you resigned your membership in the Association… all the while, you have unselfishly continued to make yourself available to help all sheriffs with questions and other needs related to the operations of the Office of Sheriff,” says the letter, which was signed by the organization’s board of directors president, vice president, second vice president, secretary-treasurer, and immediate past president.
The writers of the letter “respectfully ask(ed)” that Sills become a member of the organization again.
“For more than 25 years, you have served with distinction as the Sheriff of Putnam County,” they wrote. “We need your insight now more than ever. We need your full engagement as a member so that we can better protect the Office of Sheriff…”
Sills responded to them in a letter, expressing gratitude for their invitation and saying he had “genuinely missed” the fellowship with his comrades.
However, he also made it clear that he was still the same man he was in 2018 when he tendered his resignation, and his acceptance was contingent on that understanding.
“I hold the Office of Sheriff almost sacred,” he wrote. “I firmly believe it, as a constitutional institution, to be the most venerable and primary protector of our nation. In that vein, let me say that if you expect me to be more reticent than I have been in the past when it comes to issues that could endanger the public safety or encroach into the authority of autonomy of the Office of Sheriff then I have been in the past, I will not be.”
Sills's reply was accepted by the association, and he attended the GSA Winter Conference on Jan. 9, where he also was asked to give a presentation on an undisclosed topic.
“I’m glad to be back, and I’m not going to change my ways,” Sills told The Messenger. “Obviously they feel the need to have someone who is not afraid to speak out.”
The sheriff also enjoyed fellowshipping with the association members, which includes the sheriffs of Georgia’s 159 counties.
He said they enjoyed watching the NCAA National Championship football game together, although as an attendee of Young Harris College and Georgia Southern University and a graduate of Mercer University, he didn’t have a personal dog in the fight, so to speak.
Sills, a Putnam County native, first took office in Putnam County on Jan. 1, 1997, and has been re-elected every four years since then.
In addition to holding a B.S. degree in criminal justice from Mercer, he also is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and the National Sheriffs Institute.
He is a past president of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, and also served as the chairman of the association’s legislative committee. The organization awarded him “Georgia’s Sheriff of the Year” in 2008 and 2013, and was at that time, the first president of the association to receive the honor.
The sheriff tendered his resignation in February 2018 after Sills’ response to an inner-association email regarding proposed legislation was leaked to the press and garnered unfavorable national attention in the media, which resulted in some retaliatory consequences for two of his cohorts.
But, as the letter stated, even though he was no longer a member, Sills continued to help many of his fellow sheriffs behind the scenes.
In addition to being Georgia’s Sheriff of the Year twice, Sills’ resume also includes distinguished honors such as the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Attorney General in 2004, an Unsung Hero Award from the Anti-Defamation League in 2003, and Putnam County’s Citizen of the Year as well as Baldwin County’s Law Officer of the Year in 1992.