Multiple elected officials told the Pennington County Board of Commissioners on Sept. 29 that their offices needed additional staff and stable workforce planning; commissioners made several budget decisions on those requests during the FY2026 deliberations.

Why it matters: Personnel is the county's largest recurring expense. Decisions about FTEs and wage policies affect service delivery for public safety, courts and customer-facing departments.

Requests on the record: Annette Brant, Pennington County treasurer, asked the board to approve additional staffing so the office can staff 12 public windows in its new office and handle mail processing and training. Brant said her office measures turnaround times and reported that roughly 75% of customers are served within 15 minutes and 90% within 30 minutes; she said she provided materials (SWOT analysis and charts) to support the request.

State's attorney: The state's attorney (identified in the transcript as "Miss Laura") told the commission her office is at capacity and warned the county may have to prioritize prosecutions if staffing does not increase. "We're reaching a crisis point where we're gonna have to start making hard decisions about what crimes we prosecute because we just simply don't have the number of attorneys that we need," she said, and noted specialty courts and increased caseloads consume significant prosecutorial time.

Public defender concerns: Eric Witscher, the public defender, asked commissioners to delay actions that could force additional moves of county departments and argued the cost and disruption can be substantial. "The amount of effort and cost that it takes to move a county department is a huge undertaking," he said, noting recent investments in the Concourse Building and warning of potential client-safety or access-of-counsel risks if offices are colocated without mitigation measures.

Sheriff and detox counselors: Sheriff Brian Mueller told the board there were four detox counselor FTEs that were omitted from the provisional budget due to an oversight; he requested those four positions be restored so the care campus can bill the city and provide services that offset county costs. Jordan Ebb confirmed those four positions were not included in the flat number the board previously adopted and that adding them would increase expenditures by about $318,329. Commissioners agreed to include the missing detox counselor FTEs in the final budget package rather than removing them; the sheriff warned that without those positions the county could lose city-managed revenue for the care campus.

Law-enforcement pay discussion: Sheriff Mueller also presented scenarios for pay adjustments on the law-enforcement pay scale: he told the commission a 2% cost-of-living increase in January would cost about $170,872; splitting a 2% raise into 1% in January and 1% in July would cost about $126,644; a 3% single increase would cost about $256,235; and a 3% split would cost about $190,261. Commissioners asked for market comparisons and health-benefit analysis before acting on law-enforcement pay beyond the countywide adjustments the commission approved earlier in the meeting.

Board action on personnel reductions: A separate motion to apply a 4% reduction to specified departments was clarified mid-meeting to include the public defender's office and Buildings and Grounds; the board voted to include those two offices in the 4% reduction and staff confirmed the numbers had been recalculated and communicated to departments.

Next steps: Commissioners asked commission-office staff and HR to produce consistent, centralized FTE counts and to audit position splits across departments ahead of next year's budget process. Several commissioners said they support targeted, data-driven decisions rather than across-the-board FTE increases.

Ending: The board included the four detox counselor FTEs in the final budget adjustments and added the two offices to a 4% personnel reduction group; it directed staff to provide market and benefits data to guide future law-enforcement compensation decisions.