High turnover continues in county attorney’s office

PHS grad becomes newest prosecutor

Posted 9/12/19

Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric — who typically has four deputy prosecutors assisting with cases — was down to just one for a few days last week.

Two deputies’ tenures with the …

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High turnover continues in county attorney’s office

PHS grad becomes newest prosecutor

Posted

Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric — who typically has four deputy prosecutors assisting with cases — was down to just one for a few days last week.

Two deputies’ tenures with the office came to an end in a two-workday stretch, continuing a recent stretch of high turnover. They were the third and fourth attorneys to leave the office’s employment since the start of 2019 — with three exits occurring since mid-July.

However, in a Tuesday interview, Skoric said he’s “not at all” concerned about being temporarily shorthanded.

“Right now, we’re doing fine,” he said. “Obviously I’d like to be fully staffed 100 percent of the time, [but] that’s not reality all of the time. We’ll get there … in fairly short order.”

Toward that end, Skoric welcomed a new deputy county attorney, Saige Smith, on Monday.

Smith is a 2008 Powell High School graduate who went on to get her juris doctor from the University of Wyoming’s College of Law last year. During her time at UW’s law school, Smith received multiple honors and helped run the college’s Prosecution Assistance Clinic. For the past eight months, she served as a deputy Weston County attorney in Newcastle, while working part-time for the Gillette-based firm Berger and Brown.

“She can pretty much hit the ground running,” Skoric said of Smith, saying she seems like “a fantastic person.”

Smith, who lives in Powell, will primarily work out of the Park County Annex, marking the first time in Skoric’s tenure that he’s had a deputy from Powell working his Powell office.

“I have high hopes there,” Skoric said of Smith, adding, “Being from Powell and raised in Powell, I think that’s going to be a great addition to the Powell side of the county.”

Smith will work alongside Skoric and deputy county attorney Jack Hatfield, who joined the office back in May. While he’s only worked a few months in Park County, Hatfield came with more than 12 years of experience practicing law in the military. He joined the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps in 2007, staying on active duty until transferring to the Wyoming Army National Guard in April. Hatfield’s duties included both prosecuting and defending soldiers at many courts-martial — usually for serious felonies like sexual assaults, he said — and administrative separation boards. Hatfield also prosecuted numerous civilians and service members for offenses committed on Army installations and training areas in Hawaii — and he provided legal and investigation advice on thousands of felony investigations by U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command special agents stretching from the western U.S. to Korea, plus Afghanistan and Kuwait, he said.

Currently, he’s the commander of the 141st JAG Detachment and a senior defense counsel with the National Guard, “so I’m basically a prosecutor during the week and a defense counsel on the weekend,” Hatfield said.

As for who will join Hatfield and Smith as deputy county attorneys, Skoric had a Wednesday interview with a candidate for one of the two empty positions.

Skoric has had to do more hiring lately, with four deputies leaving in less than nine months.

“Employees come and go for different reasons,” Skoric said. “If it was all the same reason and it was attributable to this office, that would make me nervous, but I don’t believe that’s the case.”

After nearly three years in his post, Deputy County Attorney Branden Vilos left in January for a position with the Office of the State Public Defender in Laramie. Deputy Francis McVay, who’d been with the office for a year and a half, similarly left on July 19 to become a public defender in Casper.

Most recently, the tenures of deputies Leda Pojman — who’d been with the county since early 2017 — and Mike Greenwood — who’d joined up in August 2018 — ended on Aug. 30 and Sept. 3, respectively. Skoric said he didn't know where the two attorneys will go next.

Despite the turnover, the long-time Park County attorney said Wednesday that “things are under control.”

“We’re fine and we’ll get staffed up again,” Skoric said. “We’ve always moved forward and we’ll continue to move forward.”

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