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GREENSBORO — The county attorney’s office is sure to go over its budget this year, partly as a result of turnover since Sharron Kurtz resigned in December.

“We are reorganizing, so that would be justified,” Melvin “Skip” Alston said of the expected overruns.

But nobody can say how far the attorney’s office will overshoot its $608,000 budget. Since becoming chairman, Alston has often used the phrase “doing more with less” when referring to budget cuts he’s sought with Vice Chairman Steve Arnold to save tax dollars.

For the attorney’s office, a more apt phrase would be “spending more for less,” as the office is down in staff but is paying for part-time help from a retired attorney, paying severance and contracting with private legal firms to cover its legal work.

Contributing circumstances:

• Kurtz received four months’ severance pay worth at least $35,000 when she resigned in December.
• Commissioners were prepared to hire an outside firm as interim county attorney to work part-time for $12,000 a month. But Smith Moore Leatherwood dropped the contract, claiming a conflict of interest.
• Deputy attorney Mike Newby became interim county attorney in January and received a 10 percent pay increase, but left in February for Davidson County.
• Retired Alamance County manager and attorney David Smith came on as the part-time interim attorney for less than a month before leaving suddenly.
• Matt Mason was then pulled from within the county’s ranks to hold the interim county attorney slot, with a pay increase similar to Newby’s.

Then Mason hired retired county attorney Susan Moore part-time and is hiring outside firms to handle interim county legal work.

The cost of Moore’s contract and contracts for the outside firms were not available Friday. When asked for those amounts earlier in the week, Mason said he was too busy with legal work to find the figures.

“Best I can do under the circumstances and, of course, efforts are being made to address those circumstances,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Translated, it means his office is swamped with work.

“Of course, we’re going over what we had for last year,” Alston said.

To replace Kurtz, the county might hire an outside firm as its full-time county attorney. If $12,000 a month could have hired a Smith Moore Leatherwood attorney part-time, then a full-time contract with an outside firm likely would cost more.

Those expected budget overruns and expensive contracts with outside firms could have been averted by keeping Kurtz on staff.

“We had an attorney there they had no appreciation for, and they had no idea what she did,” Commissioner Billy Yow said of Alston and the votes the chairman claimed to have for her ouster.

Though the votes were gathered out of the public eye, six commissioners eventually came forward and said they wanted to fire former county manager David McNeill.

No majority has said they supported Kurtz’s removal.

“The chairman said he had it. Was he telling the truth?” Yow said of the votes. “I have to question that. Is he telling the truth?”

Meanwhile, a committee led by Kirk Perkins is looking for a new county attorney but received only four qualified applicants. Since those few applications came in, commissioners have said they might hire an outside firm. Working at a part-time rate, Smith Moore Leatherwood’s contract would have cost more than $146,000 for a full year.

Kurtz earned about $106,000. That salary is considered low among attorneys working at that level, for a county with 2,600 employees and 460,000 residents.

Not to mention having 11 bosses.

County commissioners hire and fire the county attorney, and each commissioner comes with his or her own personality. That’s something that attorney Joe Williams noted in an earlier meeting during the search for the county attorney.

“It will take a very special kind of person to stand up to you,” Williams told Perkins about the commissioners.

Perkins did not return phone messages requesting comment.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com