New county attorney ready for transition

A new child support office should be ready to go on Jan. 2, when incoming county attorney Brian Thomas officially takes office.

“Rest assured we will be in full force and full swing by Jan. 2,” he said.

Thomas said the new office is at 56 N. Main Street in a building owned by Tom Goebbel. Volunteers have been helping get the office painted and ready, and phone and cable lines are being put in, he said.

He also said the rent on the office should be approximately $900 less per month than the rent from the current location. Thomas made the office’s location a campaign issue in November, pointing out that the outgoing county attorney, Gardner Wagers, was also the owner of the building that he was renting for child support services.

Thomas has also met with Elizabethtown-based Advent on getting cold check collections started through the service. During his campaign, he said this online system could allow for speedier payment of collection fees and would allow merchants to track collections. Within the first month, he plans to hold a meeting for local merchants to talk about how child support collections will be changing with the move to the Advent system.

Within his first month of office, he said, he plans to tackle the backlog of child support and cold check collections that has occurred over the past month, and also meet with all the individuals and agencies he will be working with as county attorney. The goal, he says, is to “make sure that we’re communicating.”

Within the first couple of months, he also wants to have an audit performed by the state to evaluate the office and the expenses left from the fiscal year. In the same vein, he has been in discussions with local accountants for advising on how to implement better safeguards on the office’s budget, perhaps through software such as Quicken or Peachtree, to check all expenses with the books. This system should provide better accountability, he said.

Thomas has decided on two assistants, Chris Davis and John Pumphrey, both of whom work with him in his current law office, Grant, Rose & Pumphrey. He said the office gets money from both the prosecutor’s advisory council and from the county budget.

By changing the assistant’s job classifications through the advisory council, it could reduce the amount of money paid by the county, Thomas said, but those arrangements have not yet been approved.

As for another campaign issue, the high number of promotional office supplies bought by the county attorney’s office, Thomas said there will be some promotional items created but at a lower volume. He suggested that he might even pay for some items that he thinks are necessary, instead of using cold check collections. That money, he emphasized, is to be turned over to the county if it isn’t used up for operating expenses.

Thomas will be sworn in on Dec. 28. He said he has not had any contact with Wagers regarding the county attorney’s office since the election.

Copyright:The Winchester Sun 2006