By Larry Windom
A packed agenda awaited action by the Wright County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, but commissioners first took time to bid farewell to their long-time county attorney on the eve of his retirement. In turn, County Attorney Tom Kelly addressed the group as he presented a list of people that he wanted to thank as he concludes his years of service to the county.
Action taken during the regular meeting of the county board on Tuesday morning included final approval of the 2021 budget, certifying the 2021 tax levy, changing the county auditor/treasurer’s position from an elected to an appointed position, and approving elected officials’ salaries. All of these actions had been debated and discussed at previous meetings and, as such, all were taken with little or no discussion on Tuesday.
Discussed at length, though, was the pending departure of Attorney Tom Kelly.
As the year comes to a close, Kelly will retire after 37 total years in the county attorney’s office, with the last 22 years as the elected county attorney.
In his comments to the board, Kelly noted that he first took a position as a county prosecutor in March of 1984, when the office had only 8 employees. Today, the office has grown to 29 employees. Underscoring that he has hired 24 of them and that, together, they represent more than 500 years of experience, Kelly stated, “Over the years, I’ve been a pretty good judge of people.”
Stressing that he has always embraced a “team approach” to his profession, Kelly predictably took time to go down a long list of those he wanted to thank. He started by thanking a pair of outgoing commissioners – Charles Borrell and Michael Potter – stating that both did outstanding jobs during their time in office.
Kelly took a few moments to express gratitude for his office’s relationships with other county departments, singling out the Wright County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies with whom the county works, stating, “I’m proud of my working relationship between my office and law enforcement.”
Looking inward, he thanked his office staff, highlighting assistant county attorneys Brian Asleson and Brian Lutes, the former being the chief deputy county attorney and the latter being the person will now be elevated to fill his position. He especially mentioned his office manager Cindy Hohl, who started out in the office as a secretary at about the same time as he was hired. “Words cannot express what you mean to he,” he said of her. Finally, he thanked his wife and family.
Paraphrasing World War II General Douglas MacArthur, Kelly concluded his remarks by saying, “After 37 years, it is time to fade away. But it’s been one hell of a ride.”
On Jan. 1, Kelly will be replaced by Lutes in a transition approved of earlier by commissioners. The post is an elected one, with terms running for four years each. In announcing his pending retirement, Kelly is leaving office in the middle of a term, thus handing over to county commissioners the right to appoint a replacement until the end of the term, which runs through Dec. 31, 2022. Lutes joined the county attorney’s office in 2000 as an attorney and was promoted to chief of the criminal division in 2010.
Kelly has been with the Wright County Attorney’s Office since 1984 and was chief of the criminal division between 1990 and 1998. He was first elected county attorney in the fall of 1998 for a four-year term starting in 1999 and has been re-elected five times since, the last being in the 2018 election.
According to the Wright County website, the Wright County Attorney’s Office has 29 employees, including the county attorney, one chief deputy county attorney, one chief of criminal division, a dozen assistant county attorneys, plus an office manager, two victim/witness coordinators, one paralegal and 10 legal administrative assistants.
With an annual budget of more than $3.3 million, the county attorney supervises the assistant county attorneys and support staff, establishes policy and guidelines to be used by them, and performs administration to ensure that the duties of the office are properly carried out. The office cooperates with the Wright County Sheriff’s Department, the Buffalo Police Department, the Annandale Police Department, the Howard Lake Police Department, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Minnesota State Patrol.
Moving on to another county department, commissioners finalized a decision to convert the county auditor/treasurer’s position from an elected office to one that is appointed.
The proposed change has been discussed previously, and was put on the agenda in the form of a public hearing for final discussion, as required, before the change could officially be made. The 10 a.m. hearing was opened. With no members of the public offering comment and very little discussion, the resolution making the change was approved unanimously.
The proposal evolved from a series of discussions since last spring in regards to efforts to streamline and improve operations within the Wright County Auditor/Treasurer’s Department.
The ability for a county to make this change is very recent. Since 1973, Minnesota state law has allowed county boards to appoint a person to fulfill the duties of a county auditor or treasurer (as well as sheriff and recorder), but only after approval in a public referendum. In July of 2019, the state statute was loosened to allow a county board to change posts from an elected position to an appointed position after simply holding a public hearing.
In the two years since the Minnesota State Legislature allowed counties an easier way to convert, eight counties in Minnesota have done so. Currently, about half of Minnesota’s 87 counties have appointed auditor/treasurer positions, including all nine counties with populations larger than that of Wright County.
Citing the growth of the county and increased diversity of the work relegated to the office, Commissioner Potter commented, “This is the correct way to go forward.”
In addition to accounting and related functions conducted by the office, the office has also become the responsibility for a variety of sub-departments, including land records, elections, property tax assessments, ditch records, passports, tobacco and liquor licenses, cemeteries, grant reporting and the license bureau.
Transitioning the position of auditor/treasurer from an elected to an appointed position is part of a bigger goal of realigning the financial duties of the auditor/treasurer to more closely align with models found within the state’s larger counties. This fits into the related goal of hiring a finance director to help focus the work done in the office into two divisions as well plans to move operations to new facilities now under construction and set to open in the fall of 2021.
The current auditor/treasurer is Robert Hiivala, who said previously that he agreed with the county board’s position. Hiivala has been auditor/treasurer since 2004, when he was appointed to the job by the county board. The auditor/treasurer’s term is for four years, and he was elected in 2006, followed by re-elections in 2010, 2014 and 2018.
Jan. 15 will be the official date for the change.
In other action, commissioners approved both the budget and the certified levy for the coming year. The 2021 budget amounts to $153,827,373. The county portion of the tax levy was increased by 5 percent to $82,513,432.
The two separate votes were approved unanimously with scant discussion. The budget and tax levies have been discussed at previous meetings and were the topics of a required special public meeting on the evening of Dec. 1, at which a number of residents appeared to comment.
The hiked levy will be offset by a tax capacity growth of 6.99 percent. Only about 54 percent of the annual county budget is paid for via property taxes, with the remainder funded by state aid, fees, grants and other funding sources.
Commenting on the budget, Commissioner Potter pointed out that the tax rate is essentially the same as when most of the commissioners first took office. In the past few years, he noted, the county has been working hard to keep the tax rate stable, without the drastic ups and downs sometimes seen in the past.