Stephens BOC to Hear From Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Today

Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Christian is expected to go before the Stephens County Board of Commissioners today to ask for extra funding to pay for a new Assistant District Attorney for Stephens County.

Former ADA Rick Bridgeman retired at the end of September and Christian it will be tough to replace an ADA of his experience and caliber.

Christian wants to hire someone with experience, but told WNEG News in August that offering a competitive salary is going to be a problem.

At the time he cited an example of an experienced attorney his office just couldn’t afford to hire.

“Rick and I interviewed a current ADA who is experienced and working in another circuit and we were not able to obtain her services,” Christian said. “One of the reasons is a lot of the circuits pay good supplements in addition to the state salary. That’s something I’m going to address with Stephens County to see if they can offer that. What we need in Stephens County is another experienced prosecutor not someone right out of law school. So, it’s gone real slow. I don’t have any prospects on the front burner, so to speak.”

Christian said the starting salary for an entry-level assistant district attorney is around $44,828 a year and most new law school graduates can’t afford to live on that salary.

“The economy is good so all the law firms are hiring and they can make a lot more money with a private law firm than they can working for the state as an assistant district attorney,” Christian said. “Most law school grads have student loans and they can’t afford to take an entry-level job with the state at that amount.”

Christian cited the example of a recent law school grad who has $130,000 in student loans who turned down the Rabun County job because it just didn’t pay enough.

That’s why he is going before the Stephens County Board of Commissioners today in the hopes they wlll amend the fiscal current budget to offer a supplement to the ADA salary.

Without a supplement, Christian said he does not expect to have a new ADA in place in Stephens County before the end of the year.

“The outside chance is if we can find somebody who has experience and is interested in working in that office and the County would agree to step in and pay the salary between the end of September and December. I don’t know if I could find somebody to replace Rick in that time frame or not.”

The lack of an ADA in Stephens County has pushed a couple of big trials back.

The Hill/McElveen murder trial which was to have taken place in September has now been pushed back to November.

Today’s County Commission meeting takes place at 8:30a this morning at the Historic Stephens County Courthouse.