Editorial: New leadership needed in prosecutor’s office

Republican Fairfield County voters have an interesting choice when deciding who should lead the county prosecutor’s office for the next four years.

Primary voters will choose between Gregg Marx, the incumbent prosecutor who has spent his career working his way up through the ranks of the office, and Kyle Witt, Lancaster’s assistant law director. No Democrat has filed for the office, so the primary will most assuredly determine the winner in November.

On one hand, Marx’s longtime presence in the office is difficult to ignore; he has a ton of experience handling felony-level cases over the past 30 years. That said, this is also a management position, and we believe it’s time for someone else to take over management of the office; that’s why we’re endorsing Witt for the seat.

While it’s not at the felony level, Witt does have plenty of experience prosecuting a wide variety of cases, and we believe he can translate that to success at the felony level. We do encourage him to make strong use of the experienced staff currently in the prosecutor’s office as he makes that transition, though.

While Marx’s experience in the courtroom is valuable, his tenure in the office since 2011 has been rocky at times. The Eagle-Gazette documented the sharp increase in turnover rate within his office — 23 people over the past four-plus years in an office that employs 25 — and the reasons behind some of it. Marx states that the turnover was due to pay and other conditions, and that may be true in some cases, but we have also seen documented cases of abuse and harassment within the office.

When the Eagle-Gazette detailed those situations, Marx asked his top assistant prosecutor to resign and announced a series of other changes he’s making to the office. And that’s great, but one would hope that a leader with so many years of experience in the office wouldn’t allow those things to go on in the first place.

One of Witt’s primary campaign promises is to repair relationships with law enforcement. Marx says those relationships are fine, though the leader of the county’s third-largest police agency, Pickerington Police Chief Mike Taylor, begs to differ. Others have quietly voiced their displeasure, as well. Some of that may be typical grumbling between two offices with different levels of proof needed to bring down a criminal, but we suspect there’s more to it than that. In that sense, we do agree that new leadership is needed in the prosecutor’s office.

We encourage Republican voters to support Kyle Witt in the March 15 primary.