The short version
Most governments have one boss at the top. Maricopa County has eight. Alongside the five-member Board of Supervisors, county voters separately elect seven officers who each run an office with duties written into state law: the sheriff, county attorney, assessor, recorder, treasurer, school superintendent and clerk of the superior court. All are chosen in partisan races for four-year terms. The board sets their budgets; it cannot tell them how to do their jobs.
Who does what
The sheriff (the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, or MCSO) runs the county jails, which hold people awaiting trial and those serving shorter sentences, and patrols unincorporated land and the towns that hire MCSO rather than keep their own police. Three of those contract towns, Fountain Hills, Cave Creek and Carefree, sit just east and north of Scottsdale.
The county attorney prosecutes every felony committed in the county, including cases brought by Scottsdale police, and serves as the county government’s lawyer. Scottsdale’s own prosecutors handle misdemeanors in city court (see Scottsdale police, fire and courts).
The assessor values every parcel for tax purposes. The treasurer bills and collects property taxes for the county, cities, schools and special districts, and hands each its share. The recorder keeps the county’s official records, such as deeds and liens, and the voter rolls (see property taxes and elections).
The school superintendent runs school board elections, fills vacancies on district boards and keeps homeschool records; that includes the boards of the Scottsdale-area districts. The clerk of the superior court keeps the records of the county’s trial court and issues marriage licenses.
Below them, voters in each of 26 justice precincts elect a justice of the peace, who hears evictions, small claims and minor cases, and a constable, who serves the court’s papers. The Arizona courts guide shows where these courts fit.
Who holds the offices
As of 2026: Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, Assessor Eddie Cook, Recorder Justin Heap, Treasurer John Allen and School Superintendent Shelli Boggs, all Republicans elected in 2024. Joseph Malka has been clerk since April 2025, appointed by the governor to finish the term of Jeff Fine, who left for a statewide court job; the seat is on the November 2026 ballot.
Why elect a treasurer?
Arizona’s 1912 constitution came out of the Progressive Era’s distrust of concentrated power. Its framers made the county’s working officers answer directly to voters, so no single body could control the sheriff, the prosecutor and the money all at once. The result is accountability you can vote on, and an organizational chart with no one at the top.
The budget as a lever
The design produces friction for a simple reason: the board holds the purse, and the officers hold the duties. A sheriff who wants more deputies, a county attorney who wants more prosecutors, or a recorder who wants his own technology staff must win money from supervisors who have their own priorities and a tax rate to protect. When negotiation fails, the fight moves to court. The July 2026 Arizona Supreme Court ruling in the recorder’s favor drew the line clearly: the board cannot use its control of the budget to take over duties the legislature assigned to another officer.
The county attorney’s double role adds a wrinkle. The same office that prosecutes crimes also advises the board and the other officers, so when two county officials sue each other, at least one side needs outside lawyers.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale police book serious arrests into the county jail system through the sheriff’s intake center in downtown Phoenix, and felony cases leave Scottsdale City Court for Superior Court downtown. The old town’s link to the sheriff’s badge was more ceremonial: the Scottsdale Sheriff’s Posse, a mounted civic club, was a mainstay of early town life, and merchants such as Earl Shipp rode with it.
The Arpaio years
No county officer has shaped Maricopa’s reputation like Joe Arpaio, sheriff from 1993 to 2016. His tent jails, pink underwear for inmates and immigration sweeps made him a national figure, admired by supporters as tough on crime and criticized by opponents as abusive. They also produced the county’s two defining clashes with its own officers.
The first was with the board. In 2008 and 2009 Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas brought criminal charges against Supervisors Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox and filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against supervisors, judges and county lawyers. The charges were dismissed and the lawsuit dropped within months. In 2012 a disciplinary panel disbarred Thomas, finding he had abused his prosecutorial power, and the county paid to settle suits brought by those he had targeted.
The second was Melendres v. Arpaio, a class action filed in 2007 on behalf of Latino drivers. In 2013 U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow found that the sheriff’s office had used race as a factor in traffic enforcement and ordered sweeping changes under a court-appointed monitor. Arpaio was later found in civil contempt for ignoring the court’s orders, and in 2017 he was convicted of criminal contempt and pardoned by President Trump. Voters had already replaced him with Paul Penzone in 2016.
Oversight that outlasted the sheriff
The Melendres orders bind the office, not the man, so they have outlived Arpaio by a decade. The county says complying has cost it more than $300 million, though a court-ordered audit in 2025 concluded the sheriff’s office had attributed much unrelated spending to the case. Civil rights groups argue the oversight is still needed; county leaders argue the reforms are done and that taxpayers are paying for a former sheriff’s conduct. In December 2025 the board asked the federal court to end the injunctions. The current sheriff, Jerry Sheridan, was Arpaio’s chief deputy and was among those found in civil contempt, which keeps the case close to the office’s present as well as its past.
The recorder and the board
The newest clash is over elections. After Recorder Justin Heap took office in 2025, he sued the board to undo an agreement his predecessor had signed moving election staff and technology under the supervisors. He won in Superior Court in April 2026 and at the Arizona Supreme Court in July, and a July settlement now divides the work, as the elections guide explains. The pattern is the same one the constitution’s framers built in: separate officers, one budget, and the courts as referee.