NORWICH – It was a surprise to the vice chairman of the Chenango County Safety & Rules Committee to learn this morning that Sheriff Thomas Loughren had accepted a job on an Indian reservation in southern Florida.

“Oh really?” asked Janice O’Shea, R-Coventry.

Other county supervisors were seemingly also left out in the dark about the longtime Sheriff’s plans to move on. He was scheduled to return to work on May 23 after vacationing for a month in Florida.

City of Norwich Supervisor Linda E. Natoli and Town of Guilford Supervisor Robert Briggs said they had “overheard” that Loughren would be leaving, but didn’t know any of the details.

“I thought that he would be going sooner or later. It was just a feeling that I had, that he had been thinking more toward retirement,” said Briggs.

Calls to Loughren’s new post as police chief of the Miccosukee Police Department were routed to an extension, and an answering machine picked up. They were not returned. Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, confirmed that Loughren had accepted his new position on Monday.

Because the reservation contracts for services for law enforcement and operates its own police force, Darling said she didn’t know whether it was an issue for them to have hired someone already employed elsewhere.

“We provide the money; they do their own hiring,” she said.