Cat scratch fever. Looks like there is civil war brewing in the Guadalupe County Courthouse (a.k.a.: The Giant Eyesore with the Tacky Landscaping and Big Concrete Pecan Out Front).
Guadalupe County employs a throwback criminal justice setup known as "bifurcated prosecution", where there are two separate prosecutor's offices -- a District Attorney which prosecutes felonies and a County Attorney which prosecutes misdemeanors. The idea of dividing up responsibility this way is that it keeps a single elected prosecutor from getting too much power over the local criminal justice system.
In practice, it is often a bureaucratic nightmare, especially when you have a client who might be charged with both a felony and a misdemeanor out of the same incident. But the system lumbers along if both offices try to work in concert. It's a lot harder when one elected prosecutor publicly says that the other prosecutor-elect has an office-space arrangement that "smells" because it unethically enriches the prosecutor's-elect's husband. Local attorney Heather Hollub is slated to become Guadalupe County's new D.A. on January 1st.
As it turns out, the local D.A. has rented office space from Hollub's husband for several years and the lease will be up when the new D.A. term starts. So, Hollub and her husband recently appeared at County Commissioner's Court pushing for a new lease agreement between her D.A. office and her husband, which would net her husband $38,000, according to the Seguin Gazette Enterprise. This prompted the County Attorney, Elizabeth Murray-Kolb (Hollub's former boss), to say that the deal was a conflict-of-interest and "smelled", though she stopped short of calling the deal illegal. Hollub says she checked out the deal with numerous lawyers, and it's Kosher.
As a local criminal defense lawyer, it will be interesting to watch how these two offices get along now that there appears to be public bad blood between the two electeds even before the new DA has her swearing-in ceremony. Hopefully, the wrongfully accused don't get caught in the prosecutorial cross-fire. On a more positive note, the local bar association may have record attendance at its annual Christmas party this week if both Heather and Elizabeth promise to show up at the same time. Keep you posted.