County Attorney's office to see changes in personnel

The County Commissioners last Wednesday voted to approve the restructure of the Lincoln County Attorney’s Office.

The “restructure” as it was called on the commissioner’s agenda, was to reclassify two positions to a grade 10 (high level) position in the county attorney’s office and to fill the third, grade five (low level) clerical position.

Jeff Zwang, deputy county attorney, met with the commissioners on Jan. 4 to propose a possible restructure of the county attorney’s office. Their proposal was to reclassify two high level legal assistants and fill their open secretary/clerical position.

This came after the attorney’s office went through an influx of changes throughout the year, and after they found that the job descriptions for the high-level legal secretary positions didn’t accurately fulfill the requirements of those positions.

“There’s going to be significant changes with or without this proposal, that is to say there already has been significant changes,” Zwang said.

The total budget increase for this fiscal year of 2016/2017 will be $4,084.79 including all of the changes that have already occurred including this proposal, and the net change in the budget moving forward will be around $6,600.

Zwang told the commissioners that his office has been in flux over the past year or so, all of which will affect the budget in different ways — not all of the budget changes are attributed to the proposal.

Now, the county attorney’s office will be able to have two legal assistants that will actually be able to help with legal activities who understand law and the logistics of it. These positions will also have autonomy to write legal documents based on the materials the county attorney’s give them and not need a lawyer to dictate a legal document for them.