Ever since the Osceola County Supervisors disapproved of county attorney Robert Hansen taking additional employment in O’Brien County in January of 2006, members of the Osceola County legal community have behind the scenes been aggressively attempting to intimidate the Supervisors and anyone else who objected to Hansen’s profitable arrangement. Evidence of these attempts is below.

January 3, 2006, the Supervisors passed the resolution found here disagreeing with Hansen. By January 12, 2006, the Supervisors received a letter from the Osceola County Bar Association. Keep in mind that this is the group which former County Attorney Harold Dawson referred to in 1995 when he said that none of their members were interested in the County Attorney job. Do they have a financial interest in seeing Mr. Hansen keep his Full-time position? The letter repeated many of the themes Hansen has been saying, but disingenuously added that “Mr. Hansen’s salary received through his employment as the Osceola County Attorney is significantly lower than the salaries of identical positions in surrounding counties.” First, the positions are not `identical’ because Hansen has far less work to do than the other counties around us. Second, compare this false statement to the FY 2007 salaries of county attorneys, as provided by Iowa State Association of Counties in Des Moines. Hansen - $66,533, Dickinson - $57,200, Clay - $46,989, O’Brien - $51,500, Sioux - $88,561, Lyon - $72,681. Hansen’s is only lower than Sioux and Lyon County and each of them has a larger population than our county (Sioux County is nearly 4 times the size.) The Bar Association’s letter closed with this statement - which reveals little concern for the taxpayers – “In the interest of fairness and of the benefit to Osceola County this decision should be reviewed and overturned.” The OCTA believes the very opposite of such a proposed action is what is best for Osceola County. This letter was personally signed by E. H. Philiph, Frank Kennedy, Joseph Feller, Daniel DeKoter, Michael Thole, Harold Dawson, James Benz, Nicole Jensen-Harris and Melinda Roman.

March 13, 2007, OCTA President Kevin Wolfswinkel presented a statement to the Osceola County Board of Supervisors, regarding the recent survey of eleven Iowa county attorneys completed by OCTA. Please see his statement and survey results here.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007, a follow up letter was entered into the minutes of the Osceola County Board of Supervisors calling upon the Supervisors to reclassify the County Attorney's job from a Full-time position to a Part-time one. OCTA officially presented this letter during the April 24, 2007, meeting. OCTA's president Kevin Wolfswinkel also asked the supervisors to launch a formal inquiry into assurances made by former county attorney Harold Dawson that the job of county attorney is a full time job. OCTA thinks such an inquiry needs to be done in light of the compelling evidence that even yet today this job is not a full-time position.

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