Lake County as hired Wendy Kloeppner as its new state’s attorney, filling the gap left by the resignation of Madison lawyer Manuel deCastro in October and the change of mind made last month by Kelly Marnette, who turned down the appointment.
Lake County’s gain is Hughes County’s loss: Kloeppner has been the state’s attorney in Pierre for four years. By moving to Madison, Kloeppner is getting more money and less work:
…we, the residents of Hughes County, ask a heck of a lot from our chief prosecutor and can’t pay enough. Based on the fiscal year 2016 SDUJS’ filings report, Hughes County filed the fourth highest number of new felony cases of any county in the state at 393. Minnehaha with 3099 new filings, Pennington with 2070 and Coddington with 612 were the top three counties for new felony filings.
Just by way of comparison, Lake County, which likely will be paying Kloeppner $99,650.64, filed a total of 113 new felony cases in FY16. There were quite a bit fewer misdemeanor cases filed, too. That’s important because there’s no deputy in Lake County to handle misdemeanors. The Hughes County Commission had been set to raise the state’s attorney salary to around $83,970 next year. For the record, that’s a difference of about $15,680 [editorial, “State’s Attorney Resignation Another Sign of Tough Fiscal Times for Counties,” Pierre Capital Journal, 2017.12.22].
Overworked and underpaid—that must explain why the Hughes County prosecutor’s office never got around to charging Rep. Larry Rhoden for his disruptive false alarm pulled as a political stunt during the 2017 Session.