Melanie Bailey is the Okanogan County prosecutor.
Bailey cites staff’s positive attitude
By Marcy Stamper
After two months as Okanogan County’s newly appointed prosecutor, Melanie Bailey delivered a preliminary assessment: “Everything is going really well and running smoothly” and the caseload is “manageable.”
Bailey was appointed in January as prosecutor by the Okanogan County commissioners after elected prosecutor Arian Noma resigned halfway through his four-year term. Bailey takes the helm after two years of higher-than-usual staff turnover.
The former chief criminal deputy prosecutor, David Stevens — the other contender for the top job — resigned the day after Bailey was selected, according to Okanogan County Risk Manager Tanya Craig.
Bailey promoted former juvenile deputy prosecuting attorney Felecia Chandler to chief criminal deputy, where she’ll also continue to handle juvenile cases and some District Court cases, along with administrative tasks and law-enforcement calls, Bailey said. Chandler is one of the longest-tenured employees in the office, having handled felonies, juvenile cases and drug court cases in almost 17 years with the county, Craig said. Bailey is handling the felony cases formerly assigned to Noma and Stevens.
One of the reasons Noma gave for resigning was insufficient funding to handle what he described as an overwhelming number of cases. Noma said the Prosecutor’s Office needed at least seven more attorneys and three more support staff to carry out their duties.
But Bailey called caseloads in the office “high, but manageable.” She’s still reviewing the case list, a process delayed during her first few weeks on the job because computer access was shut down after the cyber attack on the county.
Since then, whenever she has a chance, Bailey has been going through the list of open cases to verify their status. So far, she’s filed paperwork for dispositions on about 170 cases. These are cases that, for example, have been dismissed, resolved by a plea bargain, or switched to warrant status, she said.
Normally, a disposition would be documented right away, but not all information had been updated in the internal tracking system, so cases appeared open even when they were no longer active, she said.
In her application for the job, Bailey listed the county’s historic caseloads, as tracked by Washington Courts over the past six years. In 2020, there were fewer cases than in past years, with 333 in Okanogan County Superior Court and 978 in District Court. In other years, Superior Court caseloads were as high as 540, and District Court was up to 1,750, she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic was partially responsible for the lower caseload in 2020, Bailey said.
Workplace morale
In their interviews with the commissioners and on a Republican Party questionnaire that was part of the application process, both Bailey and Stevens mentioned an environment in the Prosecutor’s Office that negatively affected productivity. Stevens was more explicit, describing a climate where employees were belittled and reduced to tears, which he said harmed office morale.
Bailey described the office in more general terms, saying she’d worked there “when it ran smoothly and efficiently … and during time of turmoil.” She stressed her commitment to an open-door policy, the open expression of ideas, and humility to restore a constructive environment.
Today, there’s an overall positive attitude, with everyone chipping in and communicating with one another, Bailey said.
Been there before
Before becoming prosecutor, Bailey had two previous stints with the county. She served as chief criminal deputy prosecutor for about two years under Noma’s predecessor and for a year under Noma. After a few months in private practice, she returned as the county’s felony deputy prosecuting attorney under Noma, but left again after a few months.
Between that job and being appointed as prosecutor, Bailey worked for the law firm that contracts with the county to provide public defenders. “I came back because my heart is here,” she said.
In 2018 and 2019, while Noma was prosecutor, 11 people left jobs at the prosecutor’s office (not counting Noma and Stevens), according to the county’s Human Resources Department. About half of those people were in administrative positions; the rest were deputy prosecutors and victim-witness advocates, according to Craig. Most had been on the job for just a few years, and some only for a few months.
That level of turnover was unusual. Before that, going back as far as 2002, annual turnover ranged from one to four people, according to Human Resources records.
Today, in addition to the prosecutor and chief criminal deputy prosecutor, the office has one felony deputy prosecutor in Superior Court. They’re looking to hire another felony deputy. There are two district court deputy prosecutors.
The office also has one chief civil deputy, a deputy for child-support matters, and two victim-witness advocates. There are five legal secretaries.
About half of the current staff has been with the county for three to seven years, and six for more than 10 years.
Reduced caseload
The current caseload has also been reduced because about 90 cases — half from Superior Court and half from District Court — have been farmed out to prosecutors from other counties. The arrangement complies with a 2020 state Supreme Court ruling that prohibits a county prosecutor’s office from handling any cases that had been handled by a law firm where the county’s prosecutor worked. Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer has been appointed as an independent prosecutor to oversee these cases. [See related story below.]
Meyer said that, compared with other counties, Okanogan County doesn’t have a large case backlog, since it restarted jury trials in both District and Superior court last summer after they’d been put on hold during the pandemic, although there were periodic interruptions for health or other reasons.
By contrast, Lewis County courts are way behind, since they just restarted trials this March after being shut down for all but one month since last April, Meyer said.
Attracting prosecutors to county offices — and retaining them — is a statewide problem, because lawyers can make more money in private practice, Meyer said. It’s important to find the right person, someone who won’t leave as soon as he or she finds another job, he said. “We’ve passed up candidates [in Lewis County] where we could tell it was a pit stop” to another job, he said.
