This week Ark Valley Voice learned that 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley has directed her staff to reduce their weekly hours to 32 hours and a four-day workweek.
Linda Stanley, 1th District DA, as announced that she is not running for reelection in 2024. Courtesy photo.
Commissioner Greg Felt raised the topic in this week’s Board of County Commissioner (BoCC) meeting. From their responses, it appeared that none of the BoCC had been informed of the change directly. Felt said that he’d gotten a call from Judge Patrick Murphy regarding this development.
County Administrator Don Reimer has just noted that the county is making progress on capital projects, specifically the remodeling of the new Chaffee office space for the DA’s staff, which is on schedule.
Felt pointed out that the four-county district (Chaffee, Park, Fremont, and Custer counties) has already had concerns over basic responsibilities of the DA’s office, such as budget spreadsheets that don’t add up. Two years ago, the DA’s office had asked for a significant 15 percent budget increase, which the leadership of all four counties had rejected.
“We’ve pushed forward with the same budget as the past. The real concern I have is — is this direction tied to the budget?” asked Felt. “Will the next step be to tell people ‘I’m only paying for the hours you work’? But it sounds like she said [to] work 32 hours per week.”
Felt added that “the input from the public defender’s side of things is that this is making their job easier. The public defenders want to see a really high-quality prosecution and defense — and this isn’t a game. We are seeing cases dismissed, we’re seeing sanctions leading to lighter sentences for truly serious crimes.”
The BoCC noted that to add to this news, DA Linda Stanley does now have a court date set with the regulatory commission and the Colorado Supreme Court for performance violations, on which Ark Valley Voice has previously reported. But that that session is not until June, 2024, which means it is probable it may not be done before the end of her term.
According to the BoCC discussion, there are also reports that she’s not providing leadership at the office, and not showing up at work but rather is working from home.
“Most of her work has to do with the lawsuit filed by Barry Morphew,” added Felt. “It’s something for us to think about.”
The BoCC suggested that they may need to get on the record with their perspective on this situation. “We might need to pull together the four counties again and consider potential actions that we could take,” suggested Felt. “That may or may not be effective. I’m very frustrated by it.”
“We’re spending a lot of money with the sheriff’s office catching criminals and the district attorney’s office is just tossing them to the wind,” commented Commissioner P.T. Wood.
Felt suggested that he reach out to the commissioners of the other four counties, to see if they want to pull something together. “We should maybe do a formal letter to her – a public letter to her. I’m hearing more and more stories of cases. It is unbelievable.”
Editor’s Note: Ark Valley Voice has asked Judge Patrick Murphy’s office if it would care to make any comment and has not yet received a response.
So, we paid her to do a terrible job as DA, and now we’re paying her to defend herself from accusations of doing a terrible job as DA? What a racket and absolute scam.
Where can I get one of these jobs where it seems impossible to get fired no matter how dangerously incompetent I prove to be?