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Commission hires Beck as part-time state’s attorney


Walworth County Commissioners, Tuesday, Aug. 2, approved hiring Vaughn Beck of Ipswich as a temporary, part-time state’s attorney for the county.
Current state’s attorney Jamie Hare has tendered his resignation. The county has been advertising for a replacement but have not found a suitable candidate for the full-time position.
Beck, who is also the state’s attorney for Edmunds County, would attend meetings via phone when he isn’t present. There are also issues to work out with the Monday holidays, when courts in both counties will be held on the same day.
Commissioner Kevin Holgard made the motion to hire Beck and he also made a motion to set Beck’s salary at $55,000. Hare’s salary is $81,220 plus benefits. Beck would not receive benefits.
Since Beck would be starting Sept. 1, Hare told commissioners Justin Jungwirth and Jim Houck that he would stay on until that time to avoid any problems at the courthouse and to help Beck get settled into the position.
Commissioner Duane Mohr said he would like to see a written proposal from Beck as to how the position would work and what he has planned for travel and so forth.
The commission will also continue the search for a full-time candidate to fill the position and will revert back to the full-time status if a viable candidate is found.

CAFO
At the Thursday, July 28 meeting meeting, the commission had voted to rescind the motion to extend the time period allowed to the file permits with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the state of South Dakota. Those permits have not been filed by the company planning a concentrated animal feeding operation near Bowdle.

“I would like to see it tabled until we get an opinion from our state’s attorney,” said commissioner Kevin Holgard. “The other attorney was pretty adamant about us overstepping our bounds.”
In the zoning and planning meeting before the commission meeting, Houck said he thought the commission overstepped its boundaries by extending the time period allowed for the second time. He said they approved not only for one year, but two and then again, which is against the resolution the commission had passed when the CAFO was proposed more than two years ago. The permits to the county have been paid, but the others have not at this time. He said that as long as no permits have been submitted to either the DENR or the State of South Dakota, the motion to rescind should stand.
Holgard said in order to avoid getting involved in another lawsuit, he would like to see the discussion tabled until they get a legal opinion from the state’s attorney. He told the board that the CAFO’s attorney said the commission did not set a date for the required actions and that the attorney checked with a “pretty prominent” person who told him the commission had overstepped their boundaries.
Auditor Deb Kahl told the board they had not followed an ordinance they had passed when they extended the permits and by not holding them accountable for missing the permit submissions, the county is setting a bad precedence.
“The way our finances are if we are not going to invite people to come into this county for a lot of bucks, we are setting a precedence too,” said Holgard.
Commissioner Mohr made a motion to table the decision until the Tuesday, Aug. 16 meeting in order to meet with the CAFO officials and their attorney.
The parties involved will be notified of the meeting by certified mail.

Visitor’s discussion
Linda Beaman addressed the commission, asking for an apology from Commissioner Scott Schilling, who said at the last meeting that Beaman had put false information in the Mobridge Tribune.
She told the commission she had not put an ad in the Tribune but had written a letter to the editor. She said mistakes were made by the Tribune’s writer of the story, not by Beaman.
A correction had been published by in the July 20 edition of the paper.
Beaman told the commission she was owed an apology from Schilling for singling her out at the previous meeting.
She said her phone calls to the commissioners before meetings have not been satisfactory. The answers to her questions during phone calls have been different answers presented in meetings.
Schilling and Beaman began another heated exchange concerning his statement that he didn’t have to answer her questions, but other commissioners stepped in and the exchanged was stopped and the meeting continued.

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