By Terry Witt  – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                County Commissioners Mike Joyner and Matt Brooks prevailed Tuesday in their efforts to shortcut the process of advertising for County Attorney Anne Bast Brown’s replacement to avoid piling work on the new attorney.

            Brown is retiring on June 30.

            Commissioners were told by Chairman John Meeks that the advertisement he saw for Brown’s replacement wasn’t ready for publication, but he said it would be placed on the May 4 board agenda.

            Joyner and Brooks didn’t think placing it on the agenda in two weeks would leave enough time to look for applicants, interview them, and put the new attorney in place before Brown leaves.

  The two commissioners won support for their plan to allow staff to draft the job description and advertisement and allow Meeks as board chairman to sign the documents as soon as possible without full board review.

            Brooks argued that the county publishes advertisements for jobs all the time. He saw no point in delaying the advertisement. Meeks said none of the jobs Brooks mentioned are on the level of a county attorney.

            “I’m sure attorney Brown has helped with the job description,” Brooks said.

            “I haven’t been asked,” Brown responded.

            “Does it need to wait? Does the board want to wait?” Brooks said pushing board members for an answer.

            “It’s cutting it close,” Brown replied.

            The board agreed to shortcut the process and let Meeks sign off on the job description and advertisement as soon as the documents are ready.

            “Go for it,” Brooks said.

            “We’ll get this up ASAP,” Meeks said.

            Earlier in the discussion, Joyner and Brooks pressed Brown to find out if there was any work she could farm out to other firms between now and her final day on June 30 to lessen the workload on her replacement.

            Brown said the only thing that might be possible would be to farm out some of the ordinances she is working on, but she wasn’t certain which ones would be ready to assign to other firms.

            Joyner suggested bringing in another attorney to assist Brown before she departs in hopes the new attorney could shoulder some of the workload and become acquainted with Brown’s work.

            Brown said there would be leftover work when she leaves.

            “It’s not going to be a clean slate for whoever comes to replace me. If you’re going to farm things out, it would be some of these ordinances. The status of the special events ordinance; that’s in my inbox to review; the subdivision regulations and planned development ordinance, I don’t think you’re even ready to have outside counsel look at that. I’m not sure that will be ready by the time I leave,” she said.

            Brown works in a small office in the building next door to the Development Department and the county hasn’t given her a larger office complex in the Levy County Annex, the county’s new office complex. Adding a second attorney to her small office might be cramped.

            The decision on advertising for Brown’s replacement was part of a larger discussion about reviewing the county’s list of ongoing projects and discussing priorities. During the first half of the discussion, Brown’s retirement wasn’t mentioned. But Meeks said her upcoming retirement was what triggered discussion of the county’s pending projects.

            “This may be unceremonious, but Ms. Anne is planning on retiring. That’s why we’re bringing this issue up. We had to bring this to the board because the Sunshine Law requirements say we can’t talk about projects among ourselves and Wilbur can’t poll us on projects of more importance to us than others,” Meeks said.

            Most of the projects on the list pass through Brown’s office for review at some point, or they start with commissioners and go directly to her.

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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting April 20, 2021; Posted April 20, 2021