County attorney outlines limits on exerting control over elected officials’ staff

Matt Hobbs, Lake County’s attorney, told the board at its April 14 work session that state law gives certain elected officials — including the sheriff and the clerk and recorder — the authority to hire and dismiss their own employees, and that can limit the board’s ability to manage personnel risk.

Hobbs said the county’s human resources office generally handles personnel administration but must balance that work with the independent statutory powers of individual elected offices. “They have the ability to sort of manage their their staff meaning they get to say who they want to hire who they want to fire,” Hobbs said, summarizing the legal constraints that often surface in personnel disputes.

The attorney described persistent tensions when HR policies or accounting rules conflict with staffing choices made by elected officials, and he said the county has tried to manage those disagreements through informal, off-the-record conversations and cooperative approaches. He also said HR and legal staff have had success in persuading elected offices to accept risk-mitigation measures at times.

Hobbs and county staff described several operational steps under way to reduce legal and financial exposure: updating the countywide employee handbook, exploring a formal compensation/step plan that could be adopted across offices, and contracting for outside HR investigation resources for complex matters. Hobbs said CTSI-provided counsel can be consulted for 45 minutes on discrete issues, and staff said an outside investigation vendor is standard practice in many Colorado counties.

Commissioners asked about monetary exposure from hiring and firing decisions. Hobbs acknowledged that discrimination and employment-related claims brought to the Colorado Civil Rights Division have occasionally arisen, and said those claims can ultimately draw on the county general fund even when they originate in an individual elected office. “You could have a situation where one elected official… it’s all going to come back to the county’s general fund one way or the other,” he said.

HR staff described current practice: when an elected official has a budgeted position they generally work with HR to post and onboard candidates, and HR often participates in interviews. Staff emphasized that HR’s role is to provide services and guidance rather than to remove statutory authority from an elected official.

The board asked staff to continue exploring policy options that reduce litigation risk while respecting statutory separations of authority, including more robust investigations, stronger documentation of hiring and termination decisions, and training for supervisors on incident reporting and root-cause analyses. The work session ended with no formal action; commissioners asked for follow-up briefings and continued coordination with CTSI and external counsel if particular cases arise.