Sex scandal in sheriff's office has some mulling future of Jackson County government

Two days before the public learned the full scope of the scandalous allegations against Sheriff Mike Sharp — kinky sex, big raises for his girlfriend, costly conflicts of interest — Jackson County legislators were briefed privately at the downtown Kansas City Courthouse.

Greg Grounds was stunned.

"The first question I asked was what are the specifics for removal," said Grounds, one of two Republicans on the nine-member governing body.

He was not stunned to learn the answer.

No process was specified in the county charter to remove the elected sheriff. Had Sharp refused to step down and not announced his resignation Wednesday, it would have fallen to yet another elected official, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker or Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, to take Sharp to court and hope a judge agreed that he was unfit for office.

And so Grounds added yet another provision to the growing list of proposed charter changes that he hopes voters will approve in August to help fix elements of what he and others see as an increasingly dysfunctional county government.

"Most people would say at this point we don't have good government," Grounds said.

Until recently, most people — including the more than 600,000 who live and pay taxes there — gave Jackson County government little to no thought at all, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

When a county government is adequately performing its necessary but mundane functions — collecting taxes, playing a supporting role in the judicial system, providing basic services to unincorporated areas — it's like the plumbing in your house. Until the pipes leak, you take it for granted.

But over the last four or five years, concerns about Jackson County government have grown over what began as a trickle of scandals and eventually devolved into a torrent.

First came the 2013 reassessment debacle, followed by millions of dollars in legal settlements for discrimination and sexual harassment in the assessment department and others, then in 2015 the first signs of what turned out to be a full-blown crisis at the county jail. Unsanitary conditions, rapes and guards beating up inmates have led to lawsuits and prosecutions.

An argument over what to do about that crisis became the foundation for the current power struggle between County Executive Frank White and the legislature. And since December, there's been the rat-a-tat-tat of jaw-dropping personal scandals making the headlines.

White's predecessor, Mike Sanders, pleaded guilty in January to federal wire fraud charges for misusing campaign funds. White is now under investigation for possible conflicts of interest involving his personal finances. And then last week, Sharp's resignation for behavior that would have seen him fired years ago had he been a boss in the private sector.

What is perhaps most striking is the contrast between the current state of county affairs and the several years preceding it, when the county's operations and its political leaders were being praised by editorial writers and other opinion leaders for what seemed like growing competence.

Gone were the rough-and-tumble politics and scandals of the 1990s and early 2000s that now, in retrospect, seem picayune. And in came this seemingly new era of professionalism, which Sanders and Sharp, to a lesser extent, appeared to epitomize.

Building upon the reputation he built as a tough and professional county prosecutor, Sanders made good on his promise to deliver efficiency and good government to the taxpayers after being sworn in as a county executive in 2007.

Two years later, Sharp arrived as the new sheriff in town following a landslide victory at the polls on his promise that he would remake the sheriff's office.

No longer would it be perceived as a lazy, backwater outfit whose only responsibilities were providing security at the courthouses and policing unincorporated "East Jack." Instead, Sharp envisioned the sheriff's office becoming the pre-eminent law enforcement agency countywide.

"That's the way it is in counties all over the country — why should it be different here?" he told The Star in the fall of 2010 in a phone interview from the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., where he was training.

In some ways, the agency accomplished some of those goals during his decade in command. Under Sharp, the sheriff's office put an emphasis on keeping track of registered sex offenders, partnering with other law enforcement agencies and improving the pay and working condition of his deputies, some of whom made so little they were on food stamps.

But Sharp, like others in the history of Jackson County government, would set his own path to ruin.

Time for a change?

While county governments still occupy a prominent and influential role in rural areas, they are in some ways anachronisms in urban America.

Jackson County's primary responsibilities include assessing property for taxation purposes, collecting property and personal taxes, maintaining infrastructure like roads in unincorporated parts of the county and operating a jail.

Jackson County outsources the public health department, a key function in most county governments, to Truman Medical Center, giving policymakers even less to worry about.

As a former mayor of Westwood who now lives in Lee's Summit and is a consultant to local governments, Bill Kostar has paid keen attention to how things operate in Johnson County, where he once interacted with the county commission, and how things work in the county he now calls home.

In Johnson County, "they run for office mostly because they would like to make a contribution to their communities," Kostar said. "In Jackson County ... they have politicos.

"If you elect people who aren't interested in the boring things county government does, it's not a surprise that it's not done very well."

Jackson County is hardly unique in the metro with its history of political turmoil. Clay County government for decades has been beset by petty squabbles and personality disputes.

Wyandotte County government once was awash in patronage, political back-scratching and political rivalries.

"We had a topless industry, which was pretty much prostitution," said Mike Jacobi, who moved to Wyandotte County in 1985. "Some of our politicians were involved to the point where they were compromised by the prostitution."

Things got bad enough that in 1998, the governments of Kansas City, Kan., and Wyandotte County merged. Few would argue that Wyandotte County's fortunes haven't improved under the Unified Government.

Some have wondered whether there shouldn't be some thought about combining county governments into Kansas City, Mo.

Other cities of similar size to Kansas City — Denver, Nashville, Indianapolis, to name a few — have successfully combined city and county governments.

Jacobi, who helped lead the push for the Unified Government in KCK, said five factors have to occur for combined governments to work.

▪ There has to be a crisis to catalyze the push for combining governments. "It's never done without that," Jacobi said. "Without that, people just won't change."

▪ There has to be a grassroots effort. "The politicians won't change," he said.

▪ But that grassroots effort has to be led by an elected official. "You have to have an elected official, a white knight," he said.

▪ The grassroots effort has to be diverse. "You cannot be legitimate if you're exclusionary," he said.

▪ There has to be substantial overlap of the existing city and county governments, much like how KCK occupied most of Wyandotte County.

That last point may be problematic in terms of combining Kansas City and Jackson County governments. What about Lee’s Summit? Independence?

Plus, Grounds said eastern Jackson County would never go for it.

"The area I represent would go crazy," Grounds said. "They would worry about the western side of the district controlling things."

The Jackson County charter was last changed in 2010. It's supposed to be updated every 10 years.

For now, key changes to the charter under consideration include setting term limits for the legislature as well as increasing legislators' pay, which is currently about $35,000.

"It is financially impossible for the blue-collar, regular-job individual to run for office, because they would have to give up everything," Grounds said.

Others are less certain that Jackson County government's latest problems have anything to do with the charter structure.

Some are even less convinced that Sharp's problems are an indictment of Jackson County.

"That's just a mess he created for himself," said Mike White, an attorney and a former Jackson County executive.

Picking a new sheriff

For now, the question is who will replace Sharp, who had as many supporters within the department as he did detractors.

According to the county charter, Frank White has the power to name an interim sheriff for the rest of this year, then voters will choose a replacement in the fall to finish the final two years of Sharp's term.

But after some county legislators insisted that they should have an advisory role, White on Friday announced the formation of a nine-member nominating committee.

Rather than get in another fight with the legislature, he chose a middle path that may have helped ease some of the tensions that have roiled that relationship.

As for Sharp, he hasn't said a word publicly since issuing a brief statement Wednesday in which he apologized to the taxpayers and accepted responsibility for his misdeeds.

Sharp acknowledged in a court deposition that he gave Christine Lynde, an employee of the sheriff's office, $8,000 as a down payment for a house after Lynde sued the county for harassment. Court records also say Sharp approved multiple promotions and pay raises for Lynde. And he acknowledged in a deposition that he, Lynde and his now ex-wife had sex together.

His former department spoke up for him Friday with a list of his "successes" in office. Among them: better pay for deputies, new uniforms and a new home for the department. Unmentioned were the hostile work environment some say he created, the shame last week's news brought on the department and a pile of legal bills that are sure to mount.

This story was originally published April 21, 2018 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Sex scandal in sheriff's office has some mulling future of Jackson County government."