Muscatine County Gary Allison gave the following statement to the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors during its regular meeting Monday, Nov. 2, 2009:

Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen of the Board:

After becoming aware of this scheduled discussion, I was sorry to see that no member of the Board sought any information or opinions from me on such an important issue, nor was I even invited by the Board to attend this meeting. After reading Friday’s Muscatine Journal, however, I can understand why. Tom Furlong and Dave Watkins have apparently made up their minds on the issue. Tom said that this will be more efficient and must be done now. I wonder what information he used to arrive at that decision since he neither requested nor received any information from my office that would be relevant.

In the article Tom and Dave stated that a full time County Attorney would also provide a consistent contact in the County Attorney’s office. I think all of the phone lines at the County Attorney’s office are operable. I also frequently receive County Attorney calls at all hours of the day and night on my cell phone. I am on duty 24/7. 1 have gone to crime scenes, accident scenes, armed standoffs, body recoveries, autopsies, drug busts and interviewed rape victims at all hours.

Dave stated that this change will improve time management and workload distribution in the office. How does he know what the time management or workload distribution in the office is since he has neither requested nor received any information? I did not understand that time management was an issue to the Board. I thought that getting the job done in an efficient manner was what was important. Is the Board only interested in time management in the County Attorney’s office? I have not heard this issue raised with regard to any other County office.

Based on Tom and Dave’s comments in the Journal article, there also may be a misunderstanding as to the relationship between the Board and the County Attorney. The County Attorney is not an employee of the Board, nor under their supervision. The County Attorney is an elected official and is not required to work a certain schedule or put in a certain number of hours per week - the same as for your Board positions. The County Attorney is your legal counsel, but does not report to you. Their responsibility to the Board is to give legal advice and I have done so promptly whenever requested.

We have a system in this State called elective office whereby an official is elected by the people. The Code of Iowa defines their duties. If he or she does their job they will probably get re-elected. If not, they probably won’t. I have a copy of Chapter 331.756 of the Code of Iowa that defines the duties of the County Attorney. It provides that the County Attorney has 85 specific duties. Nowhere is there a mention of time management or workload distribution. The County Attorney’s duties are defined by the Code, not the Board.

Tom stated that this idea has been discussed among the members for 2 years. These must have been private closed door meetings, because this is the first time it has come to my attention or been placed on the agenda for a public meeting. It certainly seems odd to schedule the issue for public discussion for the first time after a decision has apparently already been made.

Another issue that must be addressed is the conflict of interest of Esther Dean to vote on this matter. She is a criminal defense lawyer and as such, has a vested interest in seeing a weak County Attorney’s office. She is by the nature of her position an adversary of the County Attorney’s office every day in court. By virtue of this, she has an ethical conflict and should abstain from voting on this issue. In fact, she should not be voting on any issue affecting the budget or personnel decisions of the County Attorney’s office. Let me put it in a context that everyone can understand. If you were a member of a professional athletic team, would you want a member of the opposing team to be able to vote on your team’s budget or personnel decisions? I think not.

I believe that several members of the Board wish to see me replaced as County Attorney and are using this technique to accomplish that goal.

I want to address 3 issues regarding changing the Muscatine County Attorney’s office to full time policy, economics and politics.

The first question is whether it makes sense from a policy perspective. The answer is no. Approximately one-half of Iowa’s counties have full time County Attorneys and one half have part time County Attorneys. Muscatine County has had a part time County Attorney since it was founded and has been well served under the present system. There should be a good policy reason for making a change after all these years. One of the most important rules of management is "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." In the almost seven years that I have been Muscatine County Attorney, I have received very few complaints from the Board, Department Heads or law enforcement over the service provided by my office. Those few minor issues were promptly dealt with.

My office has done an excellent job of prosecuting cases. I have received very few complaints from law enforcement agencies. In fact I have received many compliments from the Muscatine County Drug Task Force, of which I am the Director, as well as from the Muscatine Police Department, Muscatine County Sheriff’s Department, Iowa State Patrol, Wilton and West Liberty Police Departments and surrounding law enforcement agencies on the performance of my office. In most counties in the State it is common for the County Attorney’s Office to feud with the Board, Department Heads and law enforcement agencies. We have had none of that during my tenure as County Attorney. I have made it a priority to promote good working relationships between law enforcement agencies and our office.

One of the most important reasons to keep a part time County Attorney is the ties and contacts that they have with the community. A part time County Attorney is by definition an attorney with a private practice. This gives them not only experience that a full time prosecutor does not have, but gives them a sense of what is going on in the community and helps to better understand the community needs.

I personally know that, by such activities as being a Chamber member and having a relationship with local business owners, I have become aware of issues that I would not have been aware of if as a full time County Attorney I spent all of my time with judges, lawyers and law enforcement officers. I believe that a full time County Attorney would . by the nature of the job, be less attentive to the needs of the community at large than those Of law enforcement.

If Muscatine was a large metropolitan area , a full time County Attorney might make sense, but we are still a relatively small community that is better served by a part time County Attorney with more ties to the community. There is a reason why this system has worked well for over 150 years.

If the Board feels that this is an economic issue, then that issue must be properly defined. The issue is not how I manage time or workload in the office. The issue is how the productivity of my office compares with other County Attorney offices including offices with full-time County Attorneys. On that basis, as I will show, we compare very well.

My analysis is that very little, if any, savings would result from such a decision, while it would cause considerable disruption and inefficiencies in the operation of the office. The First Assistant Muscatine County Attorney earns $89,964 per year. By statute, the First Assistant can make no more than 85% of the full time County Attorney’s salary. Therefore, the minimum salary for a full time County Attorney would be approximately $106,000 per year. The difference between the full time and part time salaries would be at least $34,000 per year in salary plus additional benefits. Cutting an Assistant County Attorney would save at most $37,000 per year.

I seriously doubt that an attorney with a private practice would totally give up his or her private practice for an additional $34,000 per year. This is particularly true because he or she could be voted out of office in four years and would have no private practice to which to return. What you would end up with is a less qualified attorney to replace a veteran experienced prosecutor. Therefore, to attract viable full time County Attorney candidates, the salary would have to be sufficient to make them willing to forego private practice. I suggest that a salary in the $130,000 range would be necessary to accomplish that. If so, then the potential savings would be less than $20,000. Out of the total County Attorney budget for FY 2010 of $709,000, this would be a potential savings of about 2.5%. If your goal is to save less than 3% of the County Attorney budget, let me make that reduction in a way that will not be disruptive to the office and will not result in fewer or lower quality services to the citizens of Muscatine County.

According to the reports by 2 Supervisors in Friday’s Journal, their purpose in making this change is to promote efficiency in the County Attorney’s office and to save the taxpayers’ money. The only way any money can be saved by hiring a full time County Attorney is to cut an assistant. If that is done the office would obviously be less efficient, not more efficient. Four people would be doing what 4.5 people were doing before and an inexperienced new County Attorney would be replacing a veteran experienced attorney. Bottom line is you are trying to have it both ways. If you want to help the office then you should commit now that if you hire a full time County Attorney you will not cut an assistant. If you make that commitment, however, then you need to tell the taxpayers that their taxes are going to go up to make that happen. As one of the posters to the Journal web site stated Friday, if you reduce the staff to 4 attorneys the office will be less efficient and if you increase the staff to 5 attorneys it will cost more.

To make such a drastic change in the County Attorney’s office for such a small potential savings makes no economic sense. In addition to an experienced County Attorney, the office now has four very experienced and productive prosecutors. A newly elected full time County Attorney would not immediately have the experience or knowledge to replace an experienced Assistant County Attorney. This means that the office would have to function with only three experienced prosecutors and an inexperienced County Attorney. In this event, the workload of the office would have to be reduced. One of the first things likely to be cut would be the labor negotiations that the office does on behalf of the County. Most County Attorney offices outsource this service to private labor attorneys. If forced to outsource to reduce workload, the additional cost to the County would more than outweigh the potential savings.

I am submitting to you today a memorandum analyzing the workload of the Muscatine County Attorney’s office. Muscatine is the State’s 14th largest county. For the purpose of this analysis, I compared Muscatine County with the next 3 larger counties and the next 3 smaller counties. This comparison shows that the Muscatine County Attorney’s office operates with far fewer attorney and support staff positions. My office has the highest total number of indictable convictions (4169), yet it has the least number of attorneys. On average, from 2006 to 2008, each Assistant Muscatine County Attorney produced 926.4 indictable convictions - from 40% more to 127% more than the other offices.

The productivity of the Muscatine County Attorney’s office would not be as remarkable if the office had a large number of support staff to assist the attorneys. In fact, however, the office has the smallest level of support staffing with the exception of Warren County. That County, however, has one additional full time assistant and a full time County Attorney to make up the difference.

Excluding Muscatine County, the other 6 Counties have an average of 531 indictable offense convictions per attorney. If staffing in the Muscatine County Attorney’s office reflected this average level of productivity there should be a total of 7.85 attorneys in the office. in other words, the productivity level of the Muscatine County Attorney’s office is allowing the taxpayers of Muscatine County to avoid hiring 3 more attorneys compared to similar sized counties.

I believe that having someone with an MBA and 37 years of legal and business experience, the last 7 of which include being County Attorney, do the job for a part time salary is a pretty good value for the taxpayers of Muscatine County as opposed to paying substantially more for an inexperienced full time County Attorney.

This leads me to my last point. I want to tell you a true story and preface it by saying that I a not accusing anyone of anything. I will merely state facts, most of which are a matter of public record and let people decide for themselves.

About a year and a half ago a woman came in to my private office and asked me to represent her with regard to her father’s estate. Her father had died several years earlier. Her brother had been appointed Executor of the Estate. Her father’s will left all of his property to this woman and her brother in equal shares. I had represented the father, sister and brother in the past and in fact my office had drafted the will. Her brother hired two out of town attorneys to represent the Estate. The initial probate inventory showed an estate of over $600,000.

This woman brought in a document prepared by the Estate’s attorneys which they wanted her to sign. This document waived any accounting by the Executor, divided the real estate that had not been sold by the Executor and provided that the remaining cash be divided equally. I knew that most of the valuable real estate had be sold so I asked my client if she knew how much cash was left to be disbursed. She said that there was none, that her brother had spent all of the money. This made no sense to me so I requested an accounting from the Estate’s attorneys. While what I received was very incomplete it was obvious that substantial assets, probably several hundred thousand dollars, had been misappropriated by the Executor and that a crime had probably been committed.

Because of the conflict of interest, I withdrew from representation of my client in the Estate. I referred the case to the Muscatine County Attorney’s office and the Muscatine County Sheriff’s office for investigation of possible theft. I appointed my First Assistant as acting County Attorney in this matter and issued a directive to my office that I was to receive no information concerning this case and was to have no involvement as it went forward. That has continued to be the case. My client’s new civil attorney successfully had her brother removed as Executor for malfeasance, had a retired judge appointed as Executor and the removed Executor has made partial restitution to his sister.

As reported in the Muscatine Journal and on KWPC, multiple search warrants were executed at the brother’s home and place of employment. These warrants were executed by many different law enforcement agencies including the Muscatine Sheriffs Department, Muscatine Police Department, State Department of Criminal Investigation and the Iowa State Patrol. The investigation is ongoing and the prosecution has been joined by the Attorney General’s office. Criminal charges have yet to be filed, but I believe that will happen soon.

You may be wondering why I think this story is important or relevant to the issue you are discussing today. The brother and Executor in this case is a powerful member of the local Democratic party and a close friend of several members of this Board. His son is our State Representative. One of his attorneys is a well known Democrat who ran for State Senate against Senator Hahn and may now be seeking national office. His criminal attorney is a well known Democrat who is influential in State politics.

During the initial stages of this case, Mr. Karl Reichert, the removed Executor and brother of my client, personally threatened me that if I caused this criminal investigation to continue he would have the Board of Supervisors make the office of County Attorney full time and thereby eliminate me from that position. During the execution of the search warrants he was belligerent and threatening to the law enforcement officials. He stated to several members of law enforcement and two Assistant County Attorneys who were present that he would see that I was replaced as County Attorney and that the assistants would have a new boss.

Now the execution of his threat is being discussed by the Board. These are all facts which are either available in court files or have been made public by the media. Given the lack of good policy or economic reasons for this decision and the threats made by Mr. Reichert, I am concerned that his threats may become reality.

For all of the foregoing reasons, I believe that making the Muscatine County Attorney’s office full time would be a mistake at this time and would not be in the best interest of the citizens of Muscatine County.

Unless the purpose of this decision is to remove me as County Attorney, there is no reason that this decision needs to be made now. The present system has served the County well for many years and as I have shown the office is being run effectively and efficiently. There is no need to rush to judgment on this important issue just before an upcoming election.

A better and more reasonable approach is for the Chairman to appoint a committee to study the issue and I would like to serve on that committee. This committee could analyze the issue without time or political pressure. If the ultimate decision is that the office should be full time, make it effective for the 2014 election. This will eliminate even the appearance of a political motive. If, however, the decision is made now it appears to be intended only to affect the next election.

Thank you.

Gary R. Allison

Muscatine County Attorney