The Greene County supervisors on Monday approved an employment contract for Thomas R. Laehn as assistant to the county attorney. Laehn will begin in the new position June 1, 2017.
Laehn will graduate from the University of Iowa college of law next May. Because he will not be admitted to practice law until he passes the Iowa Bar examination in late July, he was hired as assistant to the county attorney. After he passes the Bar exam and is admitted into the Iowa Bar his title will be changed to “assistant county attorney.”
Laehn’s starting salary was set at $60,000; the salary may be increased after he is admitted into the Bar.
Laehn is familiar to county attorney Nic Martino and the county supervisors, as he was a clerk for district court Judge Bill Ostlund during the summer of 2015, after his first year of law school. “He comes highly recommended by Nic,” supervisor Guy Richardson said Monday. He said that several local attorneys and judges “got very familiar with him and thought he would be a tremendous fit.”
Martino has mentioned the last several years in discussing salaries with the compensation board that he wanted an assistant. The subject was not discussed publicly by the board of supervisors until the position was approved at the board’s Sept. 12 meeting. The supervisors had already researched the Code of Iowa to learn there is not a requirement to post a notice of vacancy for such a position.
Martino at this time does not plan to run for re-election as county attorney when his term expires at the end of 2018. “He’s looking at retirement,” Richardson said about Martino. ‘It’s time to be looking at getting someone.”
Supervisor Dawn Rudolph said, “It’s time to be looking down the road.”
Richardson said he has heard no talk of a local attorney being interested in the position of county attorney should Martino not run for re-election, but he admitted there may be someone. Board chair John Muir said it was made clear to Laehn that the position of county attorney is elected.
Laehn is a native of Iowa. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy at Drake University in Des Moines and his master’s degree and doctorate in political science at Louisiana State University. Prior to attending law school he taught courses in political theory, American constitutional law and American political institutions at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA.
