By
JAMES BELL
Hays
Post
Months after a contentious election that brought statewide attention during an already noteworthy election cycle, Robert Anderson is working harder than ever before in his new role as Ellis County Attorney — but enjoying every minute.
Now with some time under his belt in the office after stepping into the role on Jan. 11, he hopes to create a more efficient office that can file as many cases as would benefit the community.
“This office receives something like 1,500 police reports a year,” Anderson said. “With the current budget, attorneys, and staff that we have … operating the way they did, they were able to get through I believe something close to maybe 1,000 of those reports. So, whatever the numbers are exactly, we can’t get to all of them, or at least we couldn’t in the past.”
With that knowledge, he said choosing which cases take priority is significant.
“While I don’t like the idea of having unfiled cases, I would like to work more efficiently and file as many cases as we can, with my main focus of more of a quality-based solution, then a quantitative-based one,” Anderson said.
Further, he explained he wants to focus on ensuring staff attorneys are using good judgement to prosecute cases that will have the most impact on the public good.
“During the evaluation of the case, they (should) think to themselves, ‘Is what I am doing truly making Ellis County safer?’ If the answer to that question is no, then they must stop doing what they are doing,” Anderson said. “We have too many big important cases that we have got to get to and those are the ones we have to focus on.”
He acknowledges on paper, filing fewer cases may be noticeable, but is for the greater good.
“If that means our numbers go down, then that is fine,” he said. “We have got to do the best job we possibly can at identifying the individuals in our community who are inherently immoral and dangerous and evil, and those are the people that need to be a priority to be prosecuted and to be potentially imprisoned.”
For other cases involving mental health concerns, drug abuse or other situations that cause hardships that lead to crime, he said he wants to find solutions that are cost effective and just for all parties.
Helping to solidify his ideas for the office, are his months working with outgoing County Attorney Tom Drees.
Anderson credits him with giving him time in the office allowing him to get hands-on experience, something that is not always afforded an incoming county attorney.
“In this particularly instance, I think Tom Drees went above and beyond,” he said. “He had room in the budget to bring me on and make me one of his staff members. He, for the most part, allowed me to come in and almost take control in a lot of ways.”
That time allowed Anderson to hit the ground running after being sworn in.
“It did provide me a great opportunity to get acclimated and to get some experience under my belt before taking this position and I am very grateful for that,” he said.
Anderson also said, now that he is in the office, he plans to keep to a campaign promise and retain the current staff.
“I said this throughout the campaign, and it is true today as well, that I have no intention of cutting any of my staff, firing any of my staff, or brining on any additional staff,” Anderson said. “I think I have a really great staff. I really do. I am excited about what I believe we will accomplish in the upcoming years.”
A history of service
Working as a prosecutor is something new for Anderson, having spent his career defending suspects, often as a public defender, but while the two jobs may seem to have conflicting goals, he said at the core of both is being of service to others.
“One thing that I loved about defense work was being able to help people,” he said. “You come into contact with individuals from our community who are often times at their lowest point, and as a defense attorney you have to have a great ability to help lift them out of those difficult times. But what I have also discovered is that I have an equal to, or perhaps even greater, ability to do the same thing on this side.”
Anderson — a lifelong Kansan, outside a few years in college — grew up in Ellinwood and, after graduating from Washburn University School of Law, joined his father, Robert Anderson Sr., brother, Donald E. Anderson II and friend Matt Bristow, in their firm, traveling across the region for cases.
“It was very volume-based work that I was doing all over the place,” Anderson said.
Ultimately, he would focus on court-appointed criminal defense work, including child in need of care, care and treatment and juvenile offender cases through a contract with Ellis County.
“That’s kind of what got me to Ellis County to practice law,” Anderson said. “Almost on a daily basis.”
Court appointed lawyers are contracted with privately practicing attorneys to be in the rotation as needed but are often compensated significantly less than a private practice lawyer, he said.
In his new role, however, this experience is invaluable.
“Pretty much from the beginning of my career and over the next several years, I was dealing with every type of case that this office files,” Anderson said.
By mid-2016, Anderson had made the move to Hays full time and was in his own practice, focusing more on local cases.
And as 2020 neared, he was approached to run for the office of County Attorney.
He would garner 64.87 percent of the vote in the Republican primary and had no general election challenger.
The transition
Almost as a testament to the professionalism in the legal community in the area, despite arguing cases against Drees for years, he was brought into the County Attorney offices before his term was to begin.
“I think because we are such small communities, relatively speaking, and because the bar association is so small in numbers, relatively speaking, it’s imperative that everyone develop good working professional relationships,” Anderson said.
After winning the election, Drees brought Anderson into the office, giving him time as the special prosecutor. From then until Jan. 11 when he was sworn in, he was becoming familiar with the workings of the office.
“Basically, doing all of the things that this job entails,” Anderson said. He also used that time to begin forming ideas for the office under his leadership.
That is not to say he did not have some familiarity with the staff beforehand.
“That’s one of the reasons it made sense for me to run for county attorney,” Anderson said. “I already knew the personalities in this office as I had been coming in here almost on a daily basis for five years, in one capacity or another.”
Now with his time in the office, he is ready to implement some of those ideas that would refocus the office’s priorities.
But with that shift, he knows there will be some cases that do not get filed this year and he wants to see how close the office can come to closing the gap between cases sent and cases filed, before seeking more additional county funds to hire more staff, outside of a new legal assistant he hopes to bring on soon to help the recent increase in output from the office.
“There is going to be some cases that we let go. It’s fine that we don’t get to all cases because all cases don’t necessarily need to be filed,” Anderson said. “It’s finding a good balance.”
The number of unfiled cases are also not always due to the need for more staff, he said, but said if at some point in the future it is found to be justified and needed he would accept additional funds from the Ellis County Commission to increase the number of cases filed by his office.
But he will not ask them for it.
“At the current time, it would seem that if the answer is, we need to get to all of the reports that come into this office and all cases need to be filed,” Anderson said. “Then, yes, we are outmanned, we are outgunned, we are understaffed and under budgeted. But I don’t think it is necessary at this time. I think that we can evaluate over the next year how things go and then I think we can have that discussion with the commissioners about the numbers and about what we can accomplish.”
Through new policy approaches, he hopes to create efficiencies that end up resulting in a higher filed rate, and with new options for office attorney’s like new versions of diversion policies he plans to put more tools in the office attorneys’ toolbox.
“I am essentially expanding their position to do their job,” Anderson said. “And with that, I think some cases will get resolved quicker. Then more attention can be paid to other cases that are not getting resolved and when more attention is paid, I think those cases will resolve themselves quicker.
“The policies are certainly aimed at efficiency for this office,” he said.
After a year of operating with this new focus, Anderson said he hopes to evaluate the year compared to previous years, but he said even if the number of unfiled cases grows, he will not ask the Ellis County Commission for more funds, rather hopes to share the ways increased staffing could equate to more cases filed.
“I will present to them this information and basically explain that to some degree the dollars that they give us equates to the number of cases we can prosecute,” he said.
While working to make the office his own and awaiting the outcome of these early policy decisions, Anderson said he is enjoying his time as county attorney.
“I have had pretty limited time in this office, but the time that I have had, I have absolutely loved,” Anderson said. “If the next four years go as well as the last three months have, I may never leave unless the voters tell me to.
“Who knows what the future holds, but right now I am happy right where I am.”