Two former county sheriffs convicted of misspending public money are cited as examples of what not to do in a state training manual for sheriffs.
Former Fairfield County Sheriff Gary DeMastry and former Knox County Sheriff David Barber illustrate separate "don't-do-this" sections of the manual put together by Ohio Auditor Dave Yost's staff.
The manual instructs sheriffs on the proper and lawful ways they can spend public funding, including money in the Furtherance of Justice, Law Enforcement Trust Fund, Mandatory Drug Fines and other accounts.
The next edition of the training manual might well feature former Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly as another example of a sheriff gone wrong.
Kelly is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday after his conviction on 18 charges, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. The corrupt-activity conviction carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
He is the latest sheriff to get into trouble for misspending Furtherance of Justice money -- FOJ for short -- and other public funds.
Neither Yost nor Bob Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs Association, thinks the law that created the FOJ needs to be tighter. Sheriffs simply need to follow the law, they said.
"I don't see a need to change the law," said Yost, whose audits uncovered the misspending by Kelly and other sheriffs that ultimately led to criminal prosecutions.
"The law is purposely designed to give some discretion to sheriffs and prosecutors."
Most sheriffs follow the law, Yost said.
"We don't have an epidemic here," he said.
The General Assembly enacted the FOJ law in 1967, a time when the drug culture was seeping into Ohio and sheriffs and prosecutors were asking for funds they could use at their own discretion for informants and undercover operations.
The law was broadly worded so sheriffs and prosecutors could spend the money on anything within their official duties and "in the furtherance of justice."
Every elected prosecutor and sheriff in Ohio has such a fund, which equals 50 percent of what the officeholder earns.
The fund can be used for drug-buy money and to pay confidential informants, to buy bulletproof vests and to investigate terrorists -- or for any crime-fighting purpose not covered in the officeholder's regular annual budget, Cornwell said.
There is discretion, but there are rules. The rules are simple and direct, Cornwell said: Keep receipts and document how the funding was spent.
State law requires all newly elected or appointed sheriffs to receive 120 hours of training, and all sheriffs to also receive 16 hours of annual training in areas including minimum jail standards, process serving and foreclosures.
Also covered: how to lawfully handle public funds.
The sheriffs' association and Yost's office collaborate on the training curriculum for the spending and accounting of public funds. Previous state auditors including Mary Taylor, Betty Montgomery and Jim Petro did the same training, Cornwell said.
"So it's not something new," he said. "If we train on one issue more frequently than any other, it's FOJ and all the funds the sheriffs have available to them."
Kelly received training in how to use FOJ and other funds available to sheriffs, said Cornwell, who was subpoenaed by prosecutors to provide records of the training sessions he attended.
Among the sheriffs before Kelly who landed in hot water over misspending and other illegal acts:
--Former Delaware County Sheriff Walter L. "Magnum" Davis III resigned in April 2012 and withdrew his name from the November ballot that year in a deal reached with a special prosecutor investigating his FOJ spending. Davis agreed to repay $1,331 in question and never serve in office again.
--Davis' predecessor, former Sheriff Al Myers, resigned in May 2007 before pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges of receiving improper compensation for off-duty work and conflict of interest for allowing his son to get a sales commission on the purchase of sheriff's office vehicles. He received a suspended jail sentence.
--Barber, in Knox County, pleaded no contest in April 2009 to the misdemeanor charge of dereliction of duty for illegally borrowing $1,042 from his office's Law Enforcement Trust Fund and spending it on signs and radio commercials for his 2004 re-election campaign before repaying it a month later. He was fined $500 but kept his job until he retired in 2012.
--Former Noble County Sheriff Landon T. Smith, who resigned in May 2009 after 36 years in office, was sentenced that June to five years' probation and ordered to pay the county $2,500 in restitution after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of unlawful interest in a public contract and a misdemeanor charge of conflict of interest.
--Former Ottawa County Sheriff Robert Bratton was sentenced last year to a year's probation and a $1,000 fine for misspending more than $5,000 in FOJ funds, including on clothing, cigars and passes to Cedar Point Amusement Park.
--DeMastry was convicted by a Fairfield County jury in 2001 of 32 crimes involving public money misspent on meals, trips and entertainment and lying about it. He pleaded guilty to five more crimes in 2002. He was sentenced to six years in prison, and was released 11 months early, in 2007, after a judge granted his request for early release.
DeMastry ignored the county Republican Party's calls to step down after he was indicted, and he ran in the party primary in 2000 while under indictment. He lost in the primary to Dave Phalen, who is currently sheriff.
The DeMastry case inspired a state law, enacted in 2005, that allows for the provisional, paid suspension of elected officials charged with a felony if the charge relates to their official duties running their office.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, whose prosecutors tried Kelly, used the law to suspend Kelly pending the trial outcome. Now that Kelly has been convicted, Athens County commissioners plan to file a lawsuit to recover $85,406 he received in pay and benefits for nearly a year.
Despite the training that sheriffs receive in spending public money, there always will be a small minority who behave as a law unto themselves, Yost said.
"Magnum knew what the law was; it wasn't that the law was vague. Pat Kelly knew what the law was, in spite of what he said.
"The sheriffs getting in trouble are larger-than-life people who disregard advice or don't seek advice."
(c)2015 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)
