A new method, which uses a point system, is designed to take politics out of the advancement of deputies.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published July 15, 2005
NEW PORT RICHEY - It has been a recurring complaint among Pasco County sheriff's deputies for years:
Politics are part of the promotion process.
But now, sheriff's officials say they have fixed that - or at least come close.
"This is not an incremental step. It's a huge step in the direction that the employees wanted to go," Col. Al Nienhuis said Thursday. He's Sheriff Bob White's second in command.
Under the old setup, a deputy wanting to be a sergeant or a sergeant wanting to be a lieutenant had to pass an oral and a written exam to get into a candidate pool.
From this pool, the sheriff, with help from his commanders, picked whomever he wanted. Too much room for unearned favoritism, many deputies thought.
The new policy affects approximately 600 deputies and takes away much of the sheriff's discretion. Deputies still must pass oral and written tests. But the resulting pool then competes in a scoring system that gives points for achievements.
You get points if you have volunteered for the dive team. A few more if you were on the honor guard. You score if you've graduated from college. More for a master's degree. Military service earns points. So does investigative experience.
The point system is spelled out very clearly for each rank and position. If you want to be a jail sergeant, for example, you get 0.43 points per each 40 hours of career development training. Once all the points are added up, the sheriff receives the names of the top three scorers. From these three, the sheriff can take his pick. Leaving the sheriff this much discretion was important, Nienhuis said, and supported by deputies as well as the higherups.
"The deputies said you know, there's people out there that may be able to score at the top on all these things, but we don't think they'd make good supervisors," he said. "So we think we need to give that discretion to the sheriff because there's no way to measure every possible variable on a person's leadership abilities."
Acommittee of about 30 deputies of all ranks spent months working on the change, Nienhuis said.
Steve Thompson covers crime in Pasco County. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6245 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245. His e-mail address is sthompson@sptimes.com
