Board of Supervisors revenge on County Attorney: We’ll fire your attorneys and hire our own shadow county attorney’s office

Is this for real? The Board of Supervisors, which can’t stop feuding with other county officials (they’ve fought hard with Arpaio, Thomas, former Treasurer David Schweikert, current Treasurer Hos Hoskins, former county schools superintendent Sandra Dowling, forcing her not to run for reelection, the last county assessor, and there’s probably more), has decided to remove $6 million from the County Attorney’s $10 million budget it uses to pay its civil attorneys, forcing the division to go from 71 attorneys to 28, and hire its own attorneys instead, as a new “shadow county attorney’s office.” Effectively laying off numerous attorneys who have worked for the County Attorney’s Office, some for years! The reason? They are angry that Thomas and Arpaio filed an 118-count indictment against fellow Supervisor Don Stapley for financial misdealings.

The audacity of this power grab is astonishing. They’re now paying a very young inexperienced attorney, Wade Swanson, whose background is education law, $175,000 to run their newly created legal department. Even Andrew Thomas doesn’t make that much money! (He makes $123,678).

Thomas turned over prosecution of Stapley to another office, so if the supervisors claim they need their own legal department because of a conflict of interest, it’s no longer valid.

The County Attorney’s civil division is made up of lawyers who represent the various county agencies. There is no reasonable argument why the Board of Supervisors needs to replace these attorneys who represent the Assessor, the Treasurer, the Sheriff, etc. with their own new attorneys.

The Shadow County Attorney’s Office must go! It looks like the Goldwater Institute is already looking into this power grab, fortunately.