Grant County prosecutor restructures office staff

EPHRATA — Two people were laid off and two people were asked to resign while restructuring the Grant County Prosecutor’s Office.

The change will allow the office to hire two new deputy prosecutors, one for juvenile court and one for district court, without increasing the budget, Grant County Prosecutor Angus Lee said.

Lee, who took office in January, said he used his first 30 days in office to analyze what changes were needed.

“A couple things became abundantly clear,” he said. “One, was we’re never going to get any extra funding and two, we didn’t need any extra funding. We did need a couple new deputy prosecuting attorneys.”

To find the money in the budget, Lee said he found redundancies in the system. These included a secretarial position for the investigators, which was added two to three months ago, and a legal secretary.

“We just didn’t have enough work for the secretaries to keep all of them busy,” he said. “We had enough work for all of them minus one. As unpleasant as it is to have to make layoffs, when you can see a way to increase your prosecuting firepower without an increase in the budget, you have a moral obligation to do the hard thing, the right thing.”

The two people who were asked to resign included Civil Deputy Steve Hallstrom and an administrative assistant. Lee said he had lost faith in their ability to carry out the responsibilities of their positions. The administrative assistant position will be filled by a current county employee, this will make three staff positions eliminated from the budget. The civil deputy position will also be filled.

“This is a reorganization to improve efficiency. So, pound for pound, we are a more effective office,” he said. “I think this is a very good thing for our county as we move forward.”

Commissioner Cindy Carter said Lee visited with department heads and elected officials about the civil deputy position and made a decision based off of the visit.

He said the addition of deputy prosecutors to district and juvenile court will increase the office’s ability to stop criminals before they move on to bigger offenses.

The juvenile prosecutors stopped prosecuting misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, something Lee said he would like to change.

“It was never a priority for the previous administration,” he said. “We’re going to be more effective at generating results. The criminal element will learn early that there are consequences to their actions.”

Carter said she had faith in Lee’s decisions because he’s worked in the office and took the time to analyze what needs to happen.

Lee hopes to have the new positions filled as soon as possible. He is conducting his first interview on Friday.