By John Grubb, Jefferson County, Idaho

After reading in our local newspaper about the significant increase in the Prosecutor’s budget and learning that Rob Dunn is a part-time prosecutor and that his personal law office doubles as a private practice as well as our county prosecutor, I was prompted to explore further.

So, I obtained a copy of the current and 2013 budget figures and now have a few questions. How is the percentage of time and use of personnel allocated for Dunn’s private practice and county business? It seems that there would be a lot of leeway for “cooking the books”. How do taxpayers ascertain that things are on the up and up? With some of the shenanigans that’s I’ve read about in the paper about financial “misappropriations” by county officials, it raises suspension.

And I see that we taxpayers pay $27,000 for rent/lease of the Dunn Law office building. Shouldn’t the county prosecutor have an office in our new county courthouse complex? That would be quite a savings there and we could fund our senior citizens’ program. I don’t see any explanation on the budget to explain how this figure is derived. Further narrative about this would be appreciated.

Though only amounting to some $4000 or so, the amount that we pay for Dunn and his staffs’ dues/memberships/subscriptions, is this amount prorated or is the county picking up the entire bill for this? The $5,000 taxpayers pay for office supplies…are they used solely for county business?

It would be nice if the county would publicly explain some of these items. From what I’ve been reading, transparency is sorely lacking in our county.

John Grubb

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