By Cindy Schroeder
The Cincinnati Enquirer

COVINGTON - Three weeks after Kenton County Sheriff Chuck Korzenborn stormed out of a Fiscal Court meeting over a budget dispute, the two sides continue to trade accusations.

The latest dispute was triggered when the sheriff called a press conference Wednesday to denounce Kenton County Commissioner Barb Black's recent criticism of his office as "unfounded and unwarranted."

"Why Commissioner Black has chosen to single out my office and my staff as objects of ridicule, I have no idea, but I am duty bound to mount a defense when I am faced with unfounded and inaccurate attacks, which affect the efficient and effective operation of my office," Korzenborn said.

The dispute began last month when a request to fund two additional deputies for security at the county administration building in Covington prompted Black to question the efficiency and fiscal responsibility of the sheriff's office.

For more than two hours at the Jan. 14 fiscal court meeting, Black grilled the sheriff on such things as how much he was paying his top people and how quickly warrants were being served. In the end, the Fiscal Court approved the sheriff's $2.6 million budget without an additional $136,600. The money for the two deputies was taken out of the sheriff's office expenses, and the two sides agreed to discuss their differences later.

Korzenborn, who was upset when he was not allowed to address the Fiscal Court on budget issues at Tuesday's meeting, called a press conference the next day, saying that he wanted to get out "the true facts."

Kenton Judge-executive Dick Murgatroyd, Deputy Judge-executive Scott Kimmich and Black - who were attending a statewide conference for county officials in Lexington this week, responded to the sheriff's allegations Thursday via faxes and phone calls.

"I am disappointed that Sheriff Korzenborn has chosen to attack the Fiscal Court for having asked simple questions about what I consider to be a primary function of his office, particularly when he came to the court asking for $136,000 in general fund dollars," Murgatroyd said in a statement

After Black questioned the sheriff's operations, Korzenborn said he assigned Capt. Mike Klein to research her allegations and provide "a true picture" of the sheriff's operations during his first term. Klein and other members of the sheriff's command staff addressed issues in a 90-minute presentation:

Salaries: Klein said Black's claim that salaries for Korzenborn's top six employees increased 88.65% during his four years in office was incorrect. He said that figure, which he referred to as "new math," actually was the total gross wages of the entire department. He said the average annual increase for the top six deputies was 3.72 percent.

In checking with the treasurer's office, Black said that she found that wage increases for the top six salaried people in the sheriff's office rose between 37.54 percent and 73.69 percent during the past five years.

While disputing Black's figures on wage increases, the sheriff's command staff agreed that the sheriff's budget had grown by 80.5 percent in four years, but they said the 20.12 percent annual increase was because of added responsibilities, an expanded staff, and the need to attract more experienced deputies and provide for updated equipment and technology.

Klein said entry level pay for deputies increased from $15,000 in 1998 to $32,640 to rid the sheriff's department of its reputation as a training ground for other police agencies and enable the department to be more competitive when it came to recruiting the best-qualified applicants.

Black maintained the pay raises for the sheriff's top six people are "out of step" with those of the average Kenton County worker and are not a good use of taxpayer dollars. While she agreed that state law gives the sheriff's department the authority to investigate accidents and do road patrols, she said focusing on those areas was a duplication of services provided by the 14 other county police agencies when the sheriff's three constitutional duties are to collect taxes, serve warrants and provide courthouse security.

Warrants: Black said Korzenborn's office had served 1,871 warrants during the past four years, and was serving many fewer warrants, on average, than other county police agencies. During that same period, Kenton County police officers had served 5,330 with two officers on the duty, compared to 11 serving warrants for the sheriff's department, she said.

Klein, who invited county officials to check the sheriff's records on warrants served, said the sheriff's department actually served 4,846 warrants during the past four years on top of other duties, such as transporting prisoners and investigating accidents. In a random sampling of warrants served during the past four years, he said he found 25 that indicated credit serving them was incorrectly given to other Kenton County police agencies, and he said that warrants issued out of county were not included in numbers tracked by the Kenton County dispatch center.

Ed Burk, who directs the dispatch center, said there were 7,527 warrants in the system in July 1999, after purging 2,000 deemed unserviceable. Since then, that number has grown to 9,827, he said.

"Is it possible that a few (warrants) were credited to the wrong department?" Burk asked. "Yes. But do I think that it's 3,000 warrants? Absolutely, positively, no way."

County building security: Klein said the sheriff agreed to create two positions not covered in his budget at the request of county administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks prompted security concerns on the part of county officials and other building tenants.

When asked by the sheriff's staff who would cover the added cost if a new Fiscal Court was elected in November 2002, he said Kimmich's response at a February 2002 meeting to discuss building security was, "We will pass a county ordinance to finance the security positions."

"I do not recall having made that statement, but certainly I do not vote on policy," said Kimmich, adding that the fiscal court sets policy. "I think the fiscal court supports the concept (of security for the county administration building). The question is one of who funds it."

E-mail cschroeder@enquirer.com