
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 27, 1995                   TAG: 9504270030
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: EDITORIAL   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE RISING COST OF A SHERIFF'S BADGE

THE MONEY going into the race for Bedford County sheriff is neither untoward nor inexplicable. Rather, the sum - $20,000 through March, and sure to grow larger for an election that isn't until November - reflects the changing nature of local campaigns in growth counties like Bedford.

But that also underscores anew a question that residents of Bedford and similar counties would do well to begin thinking about: At what point in a growing jurisdiction's development is it time to shift law-enforcement leadership responsibility from an elected sheriff to an appointed police chief?

Roanoke County made the change a few years ago, and today has a system like that of Roanoke and other Virginia cities. An appointed chief heads a police department, while an elected sheriff retains responsibility for administering the jail, serving court papers and providing court security.

While unusual personality issues played a role in the Roanoke County decision, the issue also involves broader considerations.

For example: As a locality grows, policing it gets more complicated. An appointed-chief system opens the job to a broader, potentially national pool of candidates. In an elected-sheriff system, by contrast, only local residents need apply.

And as a locality grows, its residents are less likely to know each other personally. The ability to win election as sheriff inevitably comes to depend less on person-to-person powers of persuasion than on expertise at conducting sophisticated political campaigns.

The older, person-to-person set of political skills at least bears a connection to the qualities of judgment and diplomacy desirable in a chief law-enforcement officer. The newer kind of campaigner talent lacks so close a connection to the job. When that ability becomes a prerequisite for the job, it doesn't necessarily prevent well-qualified people from becoming sheriff. But it does impose on contenders an extra requirement unrelated, and in some ways contradictory, to the requirements of the job itself.

By Western Virginia standards, Bedford is a boom county, with an estimated population now of 56,000. The population pressures come from three directions - Lynchburg suburbanization, Roanoke Valley suburbanization and Smith Mountain Lake development.

Bedford, though, is not unique. No longer can Botetourt and Montgomery counties be regarded as primarily rural, and Franklin County is showing signs of change as well. "We're such a mobile society, I don't know who the voters are anymore," Botetourt Sheriff Reed Kelly, first elected in 1991, recently told a reporter. "The influx of people has changed the way we've campaigned. It's a different electorate than it used to be."

The escalating cost of getting elected has not yet hobbled Southwest Virginia's growth counties with sheriffs whose skills in fund raising manifestly outdistance their abilities in law enforcement. But as the cost continues to rise, so does the possibility that the posts will come to professional politicians more than professional law-enforcement officers.

And as the complexity of law-

enforcement in urbanizing counties continues to rise, so does the need for institutional reform.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB