STUMBO'S PERSONAL INVESTIGATING AGENCY AN UNNECESSARY WASTE

Attorney General Greg Stumbo should abandon his plans to redirect the
resources of his office to create a Kentucky Bureau of Investigation
under his personal command. It's a bad idea.

Stumbo says his KBI would concentrate on the enforcement of the
state's drug laws, but there are other state, regional and local law
enforcement agencies involved in the investigation of drug
trafficking, including the Kentucky State Police and a number of
multi-agency law enforcement efforts like FADE. Frankly, we can't see
how adding another independent agency - another bureaucracy and
political fiefdom - will increase the effectiveness of current
enforcement efforts one iota.

Instead, the KBI is more likely to create more communication foul-ups,
more jurisdictional overlaps and more jealousies between agencies
assigned the same task. What Kentucky needs is a more coordinated
effort in battling the scourge of drugs, not an entirely new agency
doing its own thing.

On the state level, the investigation of drugs belongs with the
Kentucky State Police, not the office of the attorney general. The
attorney general's role is in ensuring the successful prosecution of
drug traffickers throughout the state. That's where Stumbo should be
putting his office's resources, not in creating a crime investigation
unit that has not been needed in the past and is not needed now.

If Stumbo is really interested in making a positive difference in
Kentucky's drug war, he will work more closely with Lt. Gov. Steve
Pence - who doubles at Gov. Ernie Fletcher's justice secretary - in
developing strategies and policies that will more effectively reduce
the use of illegal drugs in this state, including more resources for
treatment.

But to do that would require the state's top elected Democrat to
divert his attention from the next election and work with a Republican
governor and lieutenant governor in actually trying to solve the drug
problem. If we have learned anything in the last 40 years, it is that
it takes more than just throwing more traffickers and users in jail
for longer sentences to solve this state's drug problem.

The Kentucky General Assembly can - and should - put a stop to the
creation of the KBI. State resources do not need to be wasted on an
entirely new agency that has a whole lot more to do with boosting the
ego and political ambitions of the attorney general than in improving
law enforcement in Kentucky.