Change in sheriff pay isn’t enough

Indiana lawmakers did not go far enough this winter in reforming how Indiana's 92 counties pay their sheriffs.

Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the measure into law, with an effective date of January 2011. That's when current sheriffs either leave office or begin their second terms. It limits how much sheriffs may be paid to the same salary as the county prosecutor. In Jackson County, that's $121,692.91.

The law falls short by not ending the method of paying sheriffs through what's called meal money - the money a county pays a sheriff to feed its inmates. Under current state law, sheriffs may keep any unspent meal money.

That means if a sheriff can feed an inmate for $1, he can keep the remaining 74 cents the county pays per meal. That's how it's been done for years in Jackson County, with the meal money supplementing a modest base salary ($36,668.32 this year). The program has boosted a sheriff's gross salary, although the general intent has been to boost his eventual retirement pay.

We share Jackson County Sheriff Marc Lahrman's assertion that some change or another will likely have to occur before the law is implemented. That's because with the cap approved in this latest reform plan, it makes using the meal money system more difficult to monitor and administer when paying a sheriff. The simplest answer would be for the Indiana General Assembly - or the Jackson County Council - to do what we've been suggesting the past couple of years - eliminate use of meal money as an option for compensating a sheriff. It would make the sheriff's salary fully transparent, and, who knows, maybe it could result in a cost savings.