Beach gives sheriff a bonus that Va. took away

VIRGINIA BEACH

Dwindling budgets have forced state legislators to suspend a salary bonus for sheriffs in recent years, but Sheriff Ken Stolle has found a way to still earn an additional $11,767 annually.

Stolle asked the Virginia Beach City Council to approve a 9.3 percent bonus for himself last year and council members agreed, helping bump his gross salary to $163,652. The City Council unanimously passed the same bonus this past week.

"He's deserving," Mayor Will Sessoms said.

The state used to provide the bonus as an incentive for sheriffs in the career development program. To qualify, sheriffs had to get their office accredited, have clean audits, allow employees to participate in a state master deputy program and take eight hours of training, said Robyn M. de Socio, the executive secretary of the Virginia Compensation Board, which administers the program.

About 40 percent of the 124 sheriffs statewide, including Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe, get the bonus, de Socio said.

But in January 2010, when Stolle took office, the state stopped funding the program for new sheriffs.

Stolle said he asked city officials to fund the bonus because former Beach Sheriff Paul Lanteigne received the money from the state and it was part of his salary.

"It would be a cut in the sheriff's pay from when Lanteigne was sheriff to when I became sheriff," he said. "The Virginia Beach sheriff should be treated like other sheriffs."

Stolle also pointed out that his office is accredited and meets the criteria of the program, even though the state isn't funding it.

The Beach Sheriff's Office has been accredited by the Virginia Law Enforcement Professional Standards Commission since 2005. The commission renewed the city's four-year accreditation in October 2009, during Lanteigne's tenure.

The state's cutoff for new sheriffs isn't unfair, de Socio said. There is a learning curve when a sheriff comes into office and it can take time for them to meet all the criteria of their predecessors, de Socio said.

While the city's general policy is to avoid replacing state funds with local money, the council agreed to the bonus because of Stolle's stewardship of the sheriff's office, Sessoms said.

Stolle helped the city balance its budget this year, Sessoms said.

The sheriff offered $121,596 from the jail's reserve funds to provide psychiatric medicine and therapy to about 450 poor people, a service city officials had proposed cutting.

As a former state senator, Stolle used his legislative connections earlier this year to help Beach officials successfully lobby the General Assembly to fund a land buyout program around the Navy base, Sessoms said.

"We'd have to pay him five times that bonus for his lobbying efforts," Sessoms said.

Stolle said the money for the bonus is coming out of his office's special revenue fund - which includes money raised from selling food and care items online to inmates - and not directly from taxpayers.

Stolle isn't the only city employee to receive a performance bonus last year, according to payroll data obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Of the more than 8,370 citywide workers, about 30 received bonuses ranging from about $500 to $5,000 last year. Most were Beach tourism officials who exceed their targets for bringing convention groups to the city, and emergency communications workers.

Deirdre Fernandes, (757) 222-5121, deirdre.fernandes@pilotonline.com