Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28Washington County Attorney’s Office—2016 Annual Report 10 Civil Division “Like any other skill, advising county departments on the law is something perfected through lots of practice.” The civil division is the county’s legal counselor and advisor. The duties of the civil division are numerous and range from crafting contracts to rendering legal opinions to acting as county board parliamentarian to representing the county’s interests in court. Because its responsibilities within the county are so pervasive, the civil division touches nearly every department in the county. The charts on page 8 of this report depict the manifold duties assigned to the civil division. However, raw numbers fail to capture the significant work necessitated by these numbers. In order to give context to the “numbers”, the narrative that follows merely provides a representative sampling of a challenging but overall successful work in 2016. First, we continued our successful collaboration with Community Services in the collection of medical assistance reimbursements, maintaining its attainment at better than 99 per cent. This translates to nearly a half-million dollars in collections. In one case, a total amount of $90,000 was salvaged, a record one time repayment for the county. The collection of reimbursements is dire to those programs dependent on medical assistance payments because the money funding these programs is dependent of this recycled money. If reimbursements are not forthcoming, many of the neediest are frozen out of programs. So our medical assistance reimbursement partnership is near and dear to us, and the continued success of the program is most heartening. Photo: Pete Orput and Brent Wartner with Community Services Director Dan Papin (now retired) Civil Division Chief George Kuprian