With the general election less than two months away, the Albany County Attorney race is heating up.
Jim Schermetzler, the republican candidate for Albany County Attorney, said that a combination of his plans for the office and his previous experience with what the position requires make him a worthy candidate of the county attorney job.
Schermetzler’s past experience includes managing his own legal office for eight years and supervising two Wyoming banks for five years. In his 38 years of practicing law, he has handled about 75 bench and jury trials as a criminal prosecutor.
“While the nature of the work is different, managing the Albany County Attorney’s Office is similar, in that it too includes a variety of the same responsibilities,” Schermetzler said.
These responsibilities include criminal prosecution, juvenile delinquency, child abuse and neglect and representing the county in civil matters.
One of Schermetzler’s campaign platforms is to advocate for juvenile justice and the protection and victims of neglect and abuse. He said he plans on doing this by starting two separate committees for protecting juveniles, as well as victims and families.
He said he would like to take steps that past County Attorneys have not, first by establishing a Child Protection team made up of law enforcement, schools and other organizations involved with youth.
“The purpose of that committee is to provide some education both for the team as well as to the public about identifying child protection issues,” Schermetzler said.
Schermetzler also said he plans to establish a community service board with a focus on juvenile delinquency and other issues dealing with neglect and abuse. Services such as mental health providers could also play a role in the process.
“The purpose of this committee is getting together to provide programs and services for these individuals with an aim toward prevention as opposed to waiting for something to happen,” Schermetzler said.
Schermetzler said he is working to continually improve services of the Court Supervised Treatment Program. According to the Albany County website, their mission is to enhance public safety through cost-effective, judicially supervised regime of treatment to adult substance abuse offenders of Albany County.
Though Schermetzler has not been involved in the past 5 years, he was in on the start of the court program and said it is something of strong interest to himself and the members of the Albany County office.
If elected, Schermetzler said he plans to initiate a better focus on DUI’s as that is a recurring problem in the community. He said there are some members of the court who feel the emphasis of a DUI situation could use a little change.
