I read in today's paper, Thursday, Sept. 4, that the County Commissioners voted to grant Clint Davis the additional $25,000 pay he wanted. Although two of our commissioners voted `No' the measure passed.

No offense to Clint Davis, but why should he get more money than James Owen after Mr. Owen has served in that position for two terms? Does he have years of experience we don't know about? After all, he has been a civil attorney for years, but up to now hasn't worked on criminal cases. So, in essence he will be getting on-the-job training, at a higher rate of pay than our experienced County Attorney who is leaving office.

Granted, at this time Clint Davis is working in the District Attorney's office though I have not heard of him trying any cases in court. So, at present he is already getting at least some level of training at the taxpayer's expense. However, I honestly don't think that six months of training working for a District Attorney which the people of this county loudly said wasn't doing her job, is sufficient to merit him getting $25,000 more than our present CA.

On another related matter, I read a complaint from a woman saying that it was wrong for our future District Attorney to ask for an investigator and a warrant officer to be transferred from the Sheriff's office to the District Attorney's office. That will raise his budget while at the same time removing those two expenses from the Sheriff's budget, and it will aid Scott McKee in better prosecuting cases in this county. As it is in essence a transfer from one department to another it doesn't raise expenses for the taxpayer like the higher wages for Clint Davis is going to do.

So, the outrage should be over the additional county funds being paid to an untried County Attorney rather than to a man who is already planning his strategy to clean up this county and remove the criminals from our streets.

Melissa Pehle-Hill Please review Letter to the Editor policy before submitting letter. The policy is found in the information column on the left hand side of this