Agenda item 7 R on the Brown County Commissioner’s Court agenda Monday, April 4, was consideration and possible approval of action regarding reviewing transition plans and approve any personnel changes in the County Attorney’s office.  Jennifer Broughton is the new county attorney, taking over for Shane Britton who ran for Brown County Judge and is in a runoff election next month against incumbent County Judge Dr. Paul Lilly.

 The agenda item was presented by Gary Worley, Commissioner, Precinct 1.

“Jennifer and I have talked about this and the Court has talked about this earlier, a couple of weeks ago, whatever – We’ve kind of agreed, tentatively, that there needs to be a transition period where our old County Attorney, Shane Britton, needs to stay for a little while and bring Jennifer up to speed on cases that have already been filed and things like that,” Worley said.

“I think, and Jennifer agreed with me, that somewhere around 30 to 45 days would be sufficient, a sufficient time, to have Shane stay and be a part-time Assistant County Attorney.  I don’t know what the pay would need to be.  I think it would probably need to be at least half of what the Assistant County Attorney is making now, but for no more than 45 days.  If it takes three weeks, 15 days, then Jennifer would notify Shane that that was plenty of time and then tell us or whatever,” Worley said.

Commissioner Joel Kelton asked Broughton if she was ready to make that decision today.

“I’m not opposed to any help that you guys want to pay for, obviously he has been there 20 years.  Certainly, some overlap probably wouldn’t hurt.  I have lined up a new person to be the Assistant County Attorney starting May 1st.  I haven’t presented that today, I plan to bring that up in the next week or two.  I just want to make sure, as far as funding this, I don’t want that to interfere with my ability to get my office set up the way that I plan to.  I don’t know where that money is going to come from but I’m certainly not going to turn down any assistance you guys want to pay for to help with the transition,” Broughton said.

Worley turned to the County Auditor’s representative at the meeting to ask about funding for the position which is available.

“We have a contingency fund line item, which we could probably pull it from there,” the auditor said.

Commissioner Kelton asked if there were some unused salaries but was told there is no empty salaries, a salary for a secretary had been removed.  Broughton said she intends to ask in the future for that position to be reopened.

Commissioners then discussed possible part-time salary for the position during the transition period.

In the end, no action was taken at this time on the matter.

You can watch the discussion on this subject on the Brown County website at THIS LINK.  (discussion begins at about 27 minutes into the video)