Should an elected surveyor be a surveyor? It’s a question voters are pondering in the St. Joseph County surveyor’s race.
Indiana’s elected county surveyors must make sure land drains well and property lines are clear, but the law doesn’t require them to be licensed surveyors.
In St. Joseph County, Democrat John McNamara was a licensed surveyor who held the office for 50 years before he retired in 2022. To replace him, Democratic precinct leaders in a caucus elected Robert Kruszynski, who had no surveying experience and isn’t licensed. Kruszynski opted not to seek re-election this year.
That’s set up a race between Democrat Ed Fisher, who has been a licensed surveyor for 35 years, and Republican Derek Dieter, a retired South Bend cop whose party has effectively redistricted him out of his county commissioner seat.
Fisher has never run for office in a regular election. Dieter served three terms on the city’s Common Council as a Democrat before switching parties and winning a seat on the county commissioners as a Republican in November 2020
But then in 2022, Republicans, holding all three commissioner seats, redrew district boundaries to ensure there would be two reliably Republican districts and one solidly Democratic, likely ensuring Republicans will keep the commissioners majority for at least the next decade.
When asked why he’s running for surveyor, Dieter first mentioned that development, rather than anything about performing the job of surveyor.
"The commissioner district was gerrymandered in a way that no Republican can win it, and I still enjoy working within the county and doing governmental things," Dieter said. "And the surveyor's job, fortunately Bobby Kruszynski is retiring, so it just made sense that I would jump into that."
Fisher says the law doesn’t require elected surveyors to be surveyors because so many of Indiana’s small rural counties simply don’t have enough licensed surveyors, let alone those who want to run for elected office.
He says the county would save money by no longer needing to contract out for services that require a licensed surveyor to oversee.
"They have a question about surveying, every time they call the Surveyor's Office," Fisher said. "If the county surveyor can't answer the public's question, be it for a private matter or a public matter, they have no place else to go other than hiring a surveyor to answer that question. And the surveyor answering that question may not have the answer."
So far this year through September, the St. Joseph County Auditor’s Office says the Surveyor’s Office has spent about $115,000 to contract out services, out of $175,000 budgeted.
But Dieter says most of Indiana’s 92 elected surveyors aren’t licensed and don’t need to be. He says he searched the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency’s online database and 65% of elected surveyors aren’t licensed. The state agency said it could not confirm that figure for WVPE.
According to that database, the elected surveyors in the three counties touching St. Joseph, LaPorte, Marshall and Elkhart, all have licensed elected surveyors.
"Even when McNamara was here, he did not go out and do surveys," Dieter said. "It's basically you're an administrative person for all the paperwork."
The county pays the surveyor a $70,000 annual salary. Dieter says Fisher’s qualifications would cost the county more because Indiana law allows elected surveyors who are licensed to be paid time-and-a-half. Fisher would need to request that raise from the county council if he’s elected.
The law requires elected surveyors to locate and maintain a record book showing the locations of the county’s section corners, which are needed to establish property lines. They must locate and map at least 5% of the corners.
Dieter and Fisher agree on one thing: the surveyor’s work that most impacts voters’ lives is the duty to regulate legal drains.
A five-member drainage board, composed of four citizens and a county commissioner, determines how to keep drains in the county working. Dieter has been the commissioner’s representative on the board for his nearly four years in office.
"Ever since I got here, it's pretty interesting," Dieter said. "People may think it's boring but I like it. You get to work with the farmers and you get to work specifically with issues related to drainage. I think that's the misconception that people have, that the surveyor does surveyors."
Dieter says the county Democratic Party didn’t seem so worried about the surveyor being licensed when its precinct leaders caucused in Kruszynski over Fisher. Fisher says McNamara told him three months before he retired that he wanted Fisher to succeed him. McNamara confirmed that with WVPE.
But three days before the caucus, Fisher was surprised to learn that the Kruszynski, a former county council member known as “Bobby K.” who had retired from the county highway department, was campaigning for the position.
"Bobby, who was the precinct committeeman, beat me like a drum," Fisher said. "54 to 25 I think was the vote. Didn't have a chance to speak, didn't have a chance to do anything.
"I understand it. It was a political appointment and I got that, although I didn't like it particularly. It was pretty much my first foray into politics."
In a statement to WVPE, County Democratic Party Chair Diana Hess said Kruszynski “won the precinct vote because he was better known among many precinct voters and more skilled at campaigning for the seat. It was not, however, a unanimous vote because of (Kruszynski's) lack of qualifications.”