Staffing in the county attorney’s office took up a large portion of the Greene County supervisors meeting March 16. The final result will be a smaller staff and a county attorney who doesn’t live in the county.
Early in the meeting county attorney Thomas Laehn told the board that assistant county attorney Kaitlyn Willms’ last day will be April 30. He explained his office is over-staffed and circumstances in his office no longer justify a second fulltime assistant county attorney. Willms was hired in January 2025. Snider was hired in a part-time position in 2019 and then increased to fulltime in 2022.
Another consideration in staffing the county attorney’s office is that Laehn is running for the U.S. Senate seat and does not plan to continue working in Greene County, regardless of the outcome of the November election.
Laehn has sought possible candidates to run for the position but found no one. Snider is not interested in running for office, but plans to remain as assistant.
Without a likely candidate who resides in Greene County, Laehn and Benjamin Smith, county attorney for Sac and Calhoun counties, presented a plan to have one county attorney, Smith, serve all three counties, with a fulltime assistant in two of them.
Smith brought with him a draft of a 28E agreement for the establishment of a multicounty county attorney office to serve the three counties. Smith, a Republican, would office in Sac County, his county of residence. He would carry out the statutory duties of county attorney for the three counties and serve as lead prosecutor when needed, but the bulk of the work in Greene and Calhoun would fall to the two assistants.
The combined annual salaries for the three positions is $588,000. Smith would receive $248,000, with each of the assistants receiving $170,000. Greene County would pay 38 percent of the total, based on the percentage of criminal cases handled in the county. That amounts to $223,440. According to the 2025 wage report, Laehn, Snider and Willms were paid $338,272 last year. The county would see other savings in sharing the cost of expenses like the annual Westlaw subscription.
This was the supervisors’ first look at the draft agreement. They didn’t have much time to consider it, as Smith will need to file a petition of candidacy by March 31 to be on the Greene County ballot.
After much discussion and many questions the supervisors approved a resolution entering into the 28E agreement with Calhoun and Sac counties.
Laehn called it “the best Plan B we have, and we don’t have a Plan A.”
The supervisors also spent a portion of the meeting serving as drainage trustees. Drainage engineer Jacob Hagen reported no bids have been received for work on DD#20. The scheduled bid opening was delayed to March 23 at 9:15 am. Discussion of an annexation was also delayed.
The county is currently involved in a lawsuit to get payment from Union Pacific railroad for work done on a tile within the UP right-of-way east of Scranton. Hagen reported there are now roots growing into drainage tile within Union Pacific’s right-of-way west of Scranton, and the drain is not flowing at all.
That repair would be a much larger repair than the earlier one, costing an amount that would require a public hearing. The drainage district is much larger as well, at 9,000 acres. John Muir, serving as drainage chair, suggested Hagen “get a feel” if landowners would be willing to share the cost of the repair without UP’s involvement
The board approved changing its human resources representation from Hopkins & Huebner, PC to Hinders, Updegraff and Franklin PLC. Hopkins & Huebner will no longer provide HR services to counties.
The board approved hiring Reed Wunschel as a fulltime jailer for the Greene County sheriff’s office, effective March 30. His annual wage will be $48,000.
County sheriff Jack Williams spoke against Red Lion Renewable’s proposal to put solar panels on county-owned buildings. According to Williams, when the panels’ 20-year life expectancy is done it will be the county’s responsibility to dispose of them. Because of the materials in the panels, disposal could cost more than the total saved in utility costs over the 20 years.
