Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 15, 1994 TAG: 9404160008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's worth noting, however, that Sisler arrived at that conclusion via an interpretation of Virginia's pre-1993 anti-commingling statute, and not because of any material revision of the previously known facts behind the flap.
Serious questions remain:
Does Wells get to keep the thousands of dollars in interest generated by public moneys deposited in the account?
A lawsuit filed against Wells by the Bedford County Board of Supervisors may eventually answer this question. The supervisors claim that Wells owes the county approximately $15,000 in payroll interest; the sheriff claims the interest money belongs to him.
Sisler reported that Wells used about $10,000 in interest generated by the account to buy a pickup for himself. But the issue of ownership of the money, the prosecutor said, is a matter of civil rather than criminal law.
Why did Wells not comprehend that such money mixing, if not illegal, was at least dubious?
The sheriff has claimed that a now-deceased state auditor advised him to set up the account as he did. From that, the possible inferences are that (a) this was a very unusual auditor indeed, or (b) Wells is misremembering or worse, or (c) the message got garbled at the time, with the sheriff misunderstanding what the accountant was saying, or the auditor misunderstanding what Wells was asking, or some of each.
Even accepting that, it begs the underlying question of why a public official in so responsible and visible a position did not see, and apparently still doesn't, the obvious impropriety of the practice. Maybe some of the answer is tied to a more general question:
Why are Virginia sheriff's departments so frequently embroiled in controversy?
The money mess hasn't been the Bedford County Sheriff's Department's only tribulation in recent years; there was also the drunken-deputy diversion. And Bedford isn't the only Southwest Virginia county that in recent years has witnessed uproar in the sheriff's department for one reason or another. Botetourt and Montgomery have had their difficulties.
In Roanoke County, problems with an elected sheriff led a few years ago to establishment of the system used in Virginia cities: A police department headed by an appointed chief handles most of the law-enforcement duties, while the sheriff's department serves court papers, provides court security and runs the jails.
Not all elected sheriffs are incapable of meeting the multiple demands of running a modern police force, any more than all appointed chiefs are sterling examples of how to do things right.
But the appointive system does help make police-management skills rather than campaign savvy the No. 1 qualification for office, and it allows localities to choose their top law-enforcment officials from a vastly wider pool.
In the good ol' days of the good ol' boys, maybe elected sheriffs - centers of rural political power, their deputies regarded as personal as much as public employees - sufficed.
But in places like Bedford County, whose population has nearly doubled in the past 25 years and is projected to keep growing into the 21st century, the good ol' days are numbered - as should be the days in office of those who can't seem to grasp why personal and public finances ought to be kept separate.
by CNB