At the end of the Review-Journal’s story about Sheriff Bill Young’s surprise decision not to seek a second term, the county’s top cop says he’ll be remembered well by history for his efforts to raise the sales tax to hire more officers.

“Someday, somebody is going to say ‘That was a good move.’ It will be a lasting legacy,” Young told the paper.

And that day is today, sheriff, as we at Various Things & Stuff become the first to say Young’s push to hire more officers was a good move. In fact, it was one of his biggest challenges, and more difficult than any of the coverage today and yesterday betrays.

After the Las Vegas City Council and Clark County Commission continually cried poor and refused to hire the number of officers Young said he needed, he was told to go out and campaign on his own for more money.

And Young did exactly that. He maneuvered the halls of the Legislature, and the corridors of City Hall and the Clark County Government Center as the initiative was imperiled again and again by bureaucracy and politics. And in the end, by a small margin, he won.

We’ve always liked Young, if for no other reason than he never became the politician that he so despised. Sit down for a beer with the guy, and it’s like you’re talking to a regular cop, because Young is a regular cop. And he proved you don’t have to be a smooth-talking politician in order to get — but more important, to do — the job.

It’s not to say we always agreed with Young. If he had his way, there probably wouldn’t be any strip clubs in Las Vegas. (Hey, that means no G-sting, either!) He came out against efforts to legalize small amounts of marijuana, the most harmless of illegal drugs. And he put pressure on gaming regulators to crack down on rap music because of violent lyrics, essentially criminalizing thoughts and political expression.

One thing he’s not wrong about is the fact that Las Vegas has grown harder as time as passed. “It’s become more hard-edged,” he said.

But whether you agree or disagree with Young, you always knew where he stood, because he told you in plain-spoken terms, from the first time he hit the campaign trail (and promised to look for ways to fire a particularly homicidal cop, who eventually was terminated) to today.

We’ll miss Young, and we thank him for his service. Clark County is losing one of the good guys from its roster of public service.

Let’s not be too hard on poor Charvez Foger, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s director of veterans affairs. The Review-Journal reported this morning that Foger used his security access card to allow freshly convicted felon Dario Herrera out a side door of the Lloyd D. George federal courthouse, where Reid has offices.

Apparently, Foger and Herrera have been friends for a long time, and Herrera asked his old friend for a ride to his car. Or at least that’s what Reid spokeswoman Sharon Stein told the R-J.

We’re sure it had nothing to do with Herrera wanting to avoid the reporters waiting out in front of the courthouse, and having to explain himself, the way co-defendant Mary Kincaid-Chauncey had to do. No, that had absolutely nothing to do with it.

But why should Foger be any different than his boss Reid? The senior senator was Herrera’s mentor, and maneuvered the political stars to get Herrera into the race for the newly minted 3rd Congressional District in 2002 against eventual victor, U.S. Rep. Jon Porter. Reid did it in order to allow his son, Rory Reid, to enter and win the race for Herrera’s seat on the Clark County Commission.

(In that race, Reid pushed aside state Sen. Dina Titus, who would have made a fine commissioner. But hey, family comes first, right? But there’s literally no explanation for the infamous letter signed by Reid and others essentially endorsing Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson’s candidacy over Titus’ bid, save for the fact that Reid just doesn’t like Titus.)

Reid later said he asked Herrera about persistent bribe rumors, and Herrera lied to him in saying he’d never taken money from anybody. Then again, Herrera used that same line on everybody, up to and including the jury in the G-sting case, who didn’t buy it.

Anyway, although the U.S. Marshal’s service says they’d punish anybody on its staff who did what Foger did, they concede they have no jurisdiction to reprimand anybody on Reid’s staff. And of course Reid’s office won’t mete out any discipline for Foger. After all, in their eyes, what he did in helping Herrera wasn’t wrong. In fact, it’s damn near office policy.