Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 11, 1993 TAG: 9311110210
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KAREN BARNES and DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
"The interest off the account is clearly public money," Walter J. Kucharski said in a telephone interview.
Meanwhile, a special prosecutor will determine if Wells, the county's top lawman since 1974, violated state law in the unusual manner in which he handled his department's finances.
The investigation will seek to determine:
Whether Wells violated a law that makes it a misdemeanor to co-mingle public and private funds.
Whether Wells ever converted any of the money earned from interest to his personal use.
Wells did not return several messages left Wednesday at his office and home.
The Roanoke Times & World-News sought to obtain the Sheriff's Department's bank statements through a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request filed last month. Wells said he could not comply with the request, because all his bank records were in the hands of the county's outside auditor.
In a report issued Tuesday, the auditor reported that Wells' personal account showed a balance at the close of the fiscal year June 30. County Administrator William Rolfe later said the balance was nearly $30,000.
The report led Board of Supervisors Chairman Tony Ware to ask Commonwealth's Attorney James Updike to examine the auditor's report to determine if Wells may have broken the law.
Wednesday, Updike removed himself from the investigation, citing his long relationship with the sheriff. Earlier this year, Wells helped direct Updike's unsuccessful campaign for state attorney general.
A special prosecutor has not been named.
The Board of Supervisors also created a three-member committee to help determine who owns the interest earned off the checking account - the county or Wells.
Kucharski, the state auditor, said there is no doubt that interest earned on public funds belongs to the county.
"The reason that it [the checking account] is earning a couple of hundred dollars [a month] in interest is not because of Carl Wells, but because it has $100,000 going through it each month.
"That money should go back to the county, without a doubt."
Kucharski said he was surprised that Wells, until seven months ago, maintained his own payroll bank account, a practice that ended throughout most of Virginia in the 1960s. Wells was first elected in 1973.
Wells quit using the account in April, shortly after the General Assembly enacted a law restricting the type of bank accounts that sheriffs could control.
The Virginia Sheriffs Association endorsed the legislation in response to the discovery that Bristol Sheriff Marshall Honaker had embezzled an estimated $745,000 in funds his jail received to house prisoners from other jurisdictions. Honaker killed himself in January 1992, shortly after the scheme came to light.
When the law was adopted, Wells was one of only two sheriffs in Virginia who still wrote their own payroll checks and maintained control of their own bank accounts, according to Wally Cox, the auditor for Bedford County.
In Bedford, the county treasurer handed Wells a check each month for about $100,000 for his department's payroll. Wells then would deposit the money in a personal account - to which only he had access - and write paychecks to his employees.
Kucharski said he did not understand why the unusual procedure never came under scrutiny during annual audits performed for the county.
"Didn't the auditor ever say, `Why are you giving the sheriff one hundred thousand each month?' "
by CNB