Everyone knows it’s hard to find good help these days and that may be the case when it comes to county attorneys.
Or, perhaps, Guilford County already has a plethora of great candidates and can’t choose between them. Whatever the case, the county commissioners have been putting a great deal of time and effort into job interviews to find the next top attorney, and the board spent most of the day Thursday, May 19 doing so again.
The Board of Commissioners has been looking for a new county attorney ever since longtime former Guilford County Attorney Mark Payne (seen above) announced last year that he was stepping down on December 31.
On May 19, the board got an early start –11:30 a.m. – for a virtual meeting where interviews were conducted to choose Payne’s successor.
The board hasn’t publicly discussed the hiring process and the long meeting Thursday was closed to the public. However, the board did not announce a new county attorney at its May 19 public meeting that night, and the county is planning on holding another marathon closed session in the near future to conduct further interviews and allow the commissioners time to discuss the decision.
Currently, Interim County Attorney Matt Mason is occupying the county’s top legal spot. It’s not known if Mason is interviewing for the position.
The Board of Commissioners is clearly intent on making the right call this time around. At times in the past, the county attorney’s office has had a revolving door when it came to the lead attorney. Before Payne arrived more than a decade ago, the board ran through six county attorneys in a single year. After that, the Board of Commissioners had trouble getting attorney’s to apply for the job.
Maybe it is hard to find attorneys that want to work under the current chairperson with all his shenanigans and heavy-handed missives and restrictive authoritarian demands the past few years.
No doubt.