PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano is creating a special police detail to find felons with outstanding warrants with $1.6 million being diverted from a grant to Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, a diversion Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Tuesday is part of a conspiracy and probably illegal.

 The governor, by executive order signed Monday, said there are nearly 60,000 unserved warrants in the state for individual either charged with felonies or already convicted. She ordered Department of Public Safety Director Roger Vanderpool to set up  special squad to deal with the backlog, working both with his own officers and those from other agencies.

 At the same time, Vanderpool decided not to renew a contract signed last year with Arpaio’s agency to fund most of the salaries of 15 of his officers to work on the State Gang Intelligence and Immigration Team Mission. Instead, that nearly $1.6 million will go to the felony task force.

 Gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L’Ecuyer said Napolitano decided that rounding up the felons was a better use of limited resources.

 But Arpaio said the governor, along with officials in Phoenix and Maricopa County, “conspired to take away ... money that the stat Legislature and the (county) Board of Supervisors approved specifically to enforce human smuggling laws, money my office needs to fight illegal immigration.’’ He said Napolitano’ decision to create the felony warrant tax force is “a cover-up for taking away grant money to fight illegal immigration,’’ calling the move “despicable.’’

 And DPS Chief Pennie Gillette acknowledged the only GITEM contract not renewed was for Maricopa County. But Gillette said taking the money only from Arpaio’s agency was justified, saying nearly 42,000 of those outstanding felony warrants are from Maricopa County.

 Whether the governor’s action is legal is another matter House Speaker Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, said the Legislature put $10 million into the current state budget specifically to contract with local police agencies to work with GITEM, with some of that specifically earmarked for Maricopa County. He said Napolitano cannot unilaterally decide to overrule what is in statute and use those funds instead to round up felons.

 And Maricopa County Andrew Thomas said he is exploring whether to sue.

 “There were agreements signed and agreements now are not bein honored,’’ he said.

 Gillette, however, said the expense does comply with the law.

 “They money was entitled for immigration-related criminal activity ... and also related to human smuggling,’’ she said. Gillette said many of those warrants are for “undocumented aliens that have committed criminal offenses that have caused them t have a warrant issued for their arrest.’’

 But Napolitano’s executive order does not limit the use of the funds to rounding up only illegal immigrants wanted for felonies.

 Arpaio said he believes Napolitano and her political allies targeted his agency — and his funding — because of his activ role in looking for illegal immigrants.

 The sheriff has engaged in a series of “crime suppression sweeps’’ in several communities, flooding the area with deputie who stop people for minor violations. That, in turn, gives thos deputies, who have special federal training, the opportunity t question those stopped about whether they are in the countr illegally.

 Those moves have angered not only immigration rights activists

 but also some local police chiefs who said the sheriff’s actions

 are endangering their own officers.

 Napolitano has refused to publicly criticize Arpaio, whose

 actions helped get her elected governor in 2002, saying only she

 would not “referee’’ disputes between the sheriff and others.

 Arpaio said he will continue to work with the governor. “I just

 want my money back,’’ he said.

 The sheriff also vowed to continue those sweeps, saying they are

 not being funded through that state grant. He acknowledged,

 though, that the 15 officers whose salaries were paid by the

 grant sometimes were used in those efforts.

 L’Ecuyer sidestepped a question of whether the decision to create

 the felony task force at the expense of Arpaio’s grant was

 political.

 “By definition, everything that we do is political,’’ L’Ecuyer

 said. “So when you try to parse that you’re getting into a game

 that I’m not going to play.’’

 L’Ecuyer said Vanderpool invited Arpaio’s agency to join that

 felony task force. She said that would give his agency virtually

 the same amount of money, albeit for a different purpose.

 Arpaio, a Republican, came to the Democrat governor’s political

 rescue when she first ran for governor after a political foe

 accused her of refusing to prosecute a child pornography case

 when she was the U.S. Attorney for Arizona because the target of

 the investigation was a homosexual. Arpaio cut a TV commercial

 saying that she was “the No. 1 prosecutor of child molesters in

 the nation.’’