County attorney explains small-city prosecution contracts; board initially tables item, later resumes discussion

Agenda item 7, city prosecution contracts, drew extended discussion on March 4, 2025 after county staff said city-prosecution agreements were submitted from several small cities for calendar-year 2025 coverage.

The matter is important because the contracts set how Todd County’s attorney’s office will prosecute misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors and city ordinance violations for small cities that do not retain private counsel, and because the county proposed a fair sliding-scale approach intended to distribute costs across participating cities.

The board first delayed the item when the county attorney’s office representative was not present. Commissioners agreed to table the matter until the attorney or city representatives could be present to answer questions. "If there are questions that we can't answer, I don't really think it's right for us to even talk about this at this point," one commissioner said when asking to table the item.

Later in the meeting County Attorney John Lindeman returned to the subject and told commissioners the proposed batch of agreements covers small cities (noting that the larger cities handle their own prosecutions). Lindeman said the contracts are structured as a calendar-year flat fee; he described the rate as a modest amount (examples discussed at the meeting used a $500 flat fee) intended to let small cities budget for prosecution services. Lindeman also said that some cities had already adopted the agreements locally and that if the county attorney’s office began prosecuting for a city before the board ratified the county action, the office would proceed with services the city had approved.

Commissioners asked procedural questions about timing, whether the contracts must be formally ratified at the county level before taking effect, and how payment is collected. Lindeman replied the contracts are intended to run on a calendar-year basis and that, in practice, the county’s office would honor a city’s contract once the city council approved it even if the county board had not yet completed its ratification.

At the end of the discussion Lindeman said one city (West Union) submitted its signed form after the county board packet was prepared and that the attorney’s office would clean up those items and follow up. The transcript does not show an explicit final county board vote to ratify the full batch of small-city prosecution contracts; commissioners directed staff to proceed with bringing the item to the board if additional signatures or clarifications are needed.

Ending: The board’s questions focused on timing and budgeting; the county attorney’s office described the contracts as calendar-year agreements that the county office will honor once cities adopt them locally. The item remains subject to administrative follow-up and, where necessary, formal ratification when all city signatures and documentation are finalized.