Floyd County committee appoints Rudd farmer Jorgensen as District 3 supervisor

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A committee of Floyd County elected officials took little time Monday morning selecting a new county supervisor from among two applicants. The panel voted 2 to 0 with one abstention to appoint Jim Jorgensen of Rudd as the supervisor to represent District 3.

The committee, consisting of County Auditor Gloria Carr, Recorder Amy Assink and Treasurer Jessie Holm, was required to make the appointment after the person elected in the November general election declined to accept the District 3 supervisor position.

After his appointment and after he was sworn in as supervisor, Jorgensen, a farmer, said he thought maybe his rural background tipped the scales in his favor. He said he had been interested in county government and had thought about running for office previously, but he had other commitments.

Now, he said, “I have some family that wants to become more involved in farming that are ready to take on a bigger role at home on the farm, which would free up some time for me. … I saw it as an opportunity to go through the process and see.”

Jorgensen said the job will have a learning curve, but items he is concerned about include the emergency medical services (EMS) availability in the county, “and the budget, for sure.”

“Just finding my way around the process will be a priority in itself,” he said. “I’m sure there will be many things that will surface that will need to be addressed.”

He said he has already been receiving phone calls from people once it was announced he was applying for the position, asking him to do certain things if appointed, and that will likely increase now.

His first official meeting with the other supervisors, Mark Kuhn and Dennis Keifer – also their first meeting of this new board – is today (Tuesday), a long organizational meeting that will start at 9 a.m. in the EOC room in the Law Enforcement Center and could go into the afternoon.

After Jeff Hawbaker, the winner of the District 3 election, declined the position, the committee of elected county officials decided to appoint a supervisor rather than call for a special election, and invited anyone to apply who was interested and who lives in District 3 – the northern part of Floyd County consisting of Rock Grove, Rudd, Floyd, Cedar, Niles and Rockford townships.

The committee received two applications, from Jorgensen, age 59, a farmer and former trucking company owner, and from Jake Paulus, age 41, of Floyd, a former Social Security claims specialist and retired Army captain. Both applicants submitted a letter, a resume and answered a list of 10 questions as the committee had requested.

Before making any motions regarding an appointment Monday morning, Auditor Carr said that in the interest of transparency it should be noted that Jorgensen is the brother-in-law of Recorder Assink.

Carr said after they heard that Jorgensen was applying for the position the committee contacted Assistant County Attorney Randy Tilton to see if there were any nepotism concerns or other conflicts.

She said Tilton responded with a message that said his research leads him to the conclusion that there would not be a direct conflict, but “there would be an appearance of impropriety.”

If the other two members of the committee agreed on a candidate and Assink’s vote was not needed to pass, “Amy should recuse herself and not vote,” Tilton wrote.

If Assink’s vote was needed to break a tie between the other two elected officers, “it would not be a conflict for Amy to vote in favor of her brother-in-law,” Tilton wrote.

Both candidates gave very brief statements at the meeting Monday morning, thanking the committee for the opportunity to be considered.

Carr said this is the first time she had ever been through a process like this in her more than 18 years as a county auditor, and said she was glad it didn’t happen more often.

She said there was some concern raised as to why the committee was requiring the applicants to answer a list of questions, and she said in elections there were usually forums or press interviews where candidates answered questions, and she thought that was a reasonable part of the committee’s process.

The questions were derived from questions that two other counties, Story and Delaware, has used in similar situations, with the exception that Carr added a question regarding representing the district versus representing the county as a whole because this is the first supervisors board that was elected by district, and she had expanded a question regarding the amount of time applicants could give to the position to include whether they considered it a full-time or part-time position.

Several people attended the meeting in person, and others attended over telephone conference call, and Carr offered the public an opportunity to ask the applicants questions or to ask any questions about the process, but no one did.

Holm made the motion to appoint Jorgensen, saying she read through both applications and they were both very strong, but she felt Jorgensen’s answers to the questions were closest to what she was looking for.

Carr seconded the motion and the vote was 2-0 with Assink abstaining.

An entirely new board of supervisors is now in place. All three positions were up for election this year because this is the first year that supervisors are being elected by district, after county voters approved dividing the county into three districts in a special election in the summer of 2021.

None of the three new supervisors were members of the previous board, although Kuhn was a county supervisor from 1992 to 1998 before being elected to the Iowa House of Representatives for six terms. He was elected to two more terms as a supervisor from 2011 to 2018.

Neither Keifer nor Jorgensen has been elected to political office before.

Residents of Supervisor District 3 could still call for a special election, by submitting a petition to the County Auditor’s Office with at least 192 valid signatures from District 3 electors within 14 days of when the appointment is made.