County Attorney Bernie Cassidy retiring to spend more time outdoors

After a run of almost 21 years, Lincoln County Attorney Bernard “Bernie” Cassidy will retire at the end of August to spend more time hunting and fishing in the great outdoors he’s loved all his life.

Cassidy’s last day will be Aug. 31, not quite two weeks short of his 21-year milestone as the elected County Attorney. Prior to that he was a deputy county attorney, a role he took on July 15, 1989.

In a phone interview Monday morning, Cassidy, 68, said he originally thought about retiring at the end of his last term in 2014. But with short staffing caused by an illness and a departure, he decided to stay on a while longer.

“I invested a lot of my life in this office and didn’t want to just jump ship when it wasn’t in a real good position,” he said. “I’m feeling it is now. We’ve got two good deputy attorneys and a good staff.”

Born and raised in Butte, Cassidy attended the University of Montana, including its law school, and spent his first year our of law school clerking for a judge in the workers compensation court in Helena before moving to Libby.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to work with good deputies and other county attorneys and legal assistants throughout my career,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of memorable cases over the years.”

Cassidy noted that as the 10th largest county in the state in terms of population, Lincoln County is “sort of in between being a small county and one of the larger counties” in terms of case load and other matters. He said he’s seen the felony case load grow from about 100 to 150 a year, and has seen marked increases in child abuse and child neglect cases. He also noted the “proliferation of crimes committed on social media, which are difficult for law enforcement to investigate and difficult to prosecute.”

In addition to spending more time outdoors Cassidy is eager to make better use of his season tickets to Grizzly football games.