Editor's Note: This is the second installment in a two-part Monitor series, "Stay in Your Lane," examining accountability and morale inside the Bourbon County Courthouse. The first part can be found here.
In order to avoid the political conflict between certain commissioners and elected officials described below, the Monitor did not interview any elected or non-elected staff from the office of the County Clerk or the Register of Deeds, either on- the-record or off-the-record.
Multiple employees working directly under the commission declined to be interviewed, citing fear of reprisal against themselves or their staff.
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A Courthouse Divided
William Jackson had been on the job only a few days, he said, before he understood that some courthouse offices — and some elected officials — were off limits to him.
“Certain offices, certain people I just wasn’t allowed to be around, let alone talk to,” said Jackson, who was hired March 2 as a county maintenance worker and fired May 30, hours after requesting asbestos testing.
Jackson said his direct supervisor, County Commission Executive Assistant Laura Krom, discouraged him from entering the offices of the county clerk and register of deeds or communicating with Commissioners Joe Allen and Gregg Motley.
Former maintenance employee Ethan Watson told the Monitor that Krom also discouraged him from entering certain offices or speaking with certain elected officials.
A text message Krom sent from her personal cellphone to Jackson at 1:25 p.m. May 4 appears to support their accounts.
"I'm out for the rest of the day. Just make sure Waylon doesn't go over by the clerk or my offices. Motley is already in the building. Over at Susan's office I'm sure."
Jackson effectively served as the county’s maintenance director, he said, placing Krom’s directives in frequent conflict with his responsibilities.
“It was frustrating because I had to maintain the courthouse, but I couldn’t just say, ‘Hey, I can’t be in here because my boss doesn’t like your politics,’” Jackson said.
Commissioner Joe Allen said Jackson’s account was not isolated. Allen said more than one employee had told him they were instructed not to speak with certain elected officials, including him.
“Control, I think, is what it comes down to,” Allen said.
Allen said the atmosphere was visible when he visited offices.
“I think people are looking over their shoulders,” he said.
Laura Krom did not respond to a request for comment for this article by press time.
Off The (Public) Record
Jackson described a chain of command in which Krom regularly deferred decisions to Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee. When Krom did not want to make a decision herself, he said, she elevated the matter to Milburn-Kee or Commission Chairman Samuel Tran - most often to Milburn-Kee.
"Mika and Laura, they were really, really close," Jackson said.
Jackson said Krom primarily communicated with him in her office or through her personal cellphone rather than her county-issued cellphone. He said he believed she used her personal phone to keep certain communications off the public record.
Although Krom’s office had a desk phone, Jackson said, it was often unplugged.
"Nine times out of 10, she’d have it unplugged because she said she didn’t want people listening in on her or her conversations,” Jackson said. “I don’t know what that’s all about, but whenever I had to contact her, I had to go through a personal cell.”
On July 20, the Monitor submitted a Kansas Open Records Act request under K.S.A. 45-217 for “all text messages sent to and received from county staff and elected officials from Laura Krom’s personal cell phone from May 1-31, 2026.”
On July 22, the Monitor received a response from Krom, forwarded by County Counselor Bob Johnson. It is reproduced here as written:
"In response to Kora request dated 7-20-2026, regarding my personal cell phone from May 1-May 31(text received from county staff and elected officials)- I, Laura Krom, am not in possession of any such record(s)."
Jackson, however, provided the Monitor with multiple text messages Krom sent him from both her personal and county-issued cellphones during the period covered by the request.
The messages from Krom’s county-issued cellphone included work-related discussions. Messages about hiring, Watson’s termination and directions to keep another employee away from certain offices, however, came from her personal phone.
County phone records obtained under KORA show Milburn-Kee's county phone and Krom's personal phone connected at least 100 times between Jan. 18 and June 17, including over 60 calls placed by Milburn-Kee.
No other commissioner’s county cellphone showed any contact with Krom’s personal phone in the records the Monitor obtained, which covered Jan. 18 through July 17.
Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee answered the questions she was sent for this article on a Facebook post here.
The Cameras No One Can Account For
On one occasion, after Jackson spent several minutes in the register of deeds’ office asking about the age of a ceiling, Krom texted him to return to work and then called him.
“It was fairly clear that I just needed to stay away or it’d be a risk to my job,” Jackson said.
Jackson said he did not know how Krom learned he was in the register of deeds’ office that day. By his account, Krom was not in the courthouse at the time, and the office sits in a separate part of the first floor from the county commission offices — out of view and earshot of her desk.
In separate interviews with the Monitor, County Treasurer Jennifer Hawkins and Public Works Director Kenny Allen said they believed Krom, Milburn-Kee or both had access to the camera system. Commissioner Gregg Motley said that the belief is widespread among courthouse staff.
The camera in Hawkins’ office records audio as well as video, she said. “That’s what it feels like — they have control of everything and they can watch and see who’s saying what.”
Kenny Allen said his belief stemmed from a specific incident. The morning after an off-hours argument with a contractor outside the courthouse, he received a verbal warning by phone from Steven Cohen, the county’s contracted human resources consultant.
Allen asked whether a bystander had reported him. “He said, ‘No, it was on the cameras,’ is what Steve told me.”
Who can watch those cameras is a question the county’s records cannot answer.
On July 15, the Monitor submitted a KORA request for “Courthouse camera system access logs from January 2026 to present.”
In a series of emails responding to the request, Johnson wrote that the records “would be stronghold or laura.” Krom responded that she was “not in possession of any such record(s).”
A search by Stronghold Data, the county’s IT contractor, covering January through late July found only about 10 sign-in events, all under a single shared account named “admin.” Systems engineer Zach Bishop explained the gap, writing that “the Admin account remains logged in and the application is rarely closed.”
Because the shared account remains logged in, the system does not record individual viewing sessions. It therefore cannot show who watched the cameras or when. An audit provided by Stronghold found the camera software installed on five county computers.
During the July 27 county commission meeting, Motley said he had contacted Stronghold to ask who had access to the security cameras and was told that no one did. Motley said he made the call because he had learned that at least one former employee still had access to the system.
Following a motion from Motley, the commission voted unanimously to have Stronghold remove all existing credentials.
The Monitor independently confirmed that a former employee had access through a personal device, not a county computer.
Before the commission eliminated commissioners’ liaison assignments to county departments, Milburn-Kee served as the commission’s point of contact with Stronghold.
‘"Stay in your lane"
This series takes its title from an email County Treasurer Jennifer Hawkins said she received from Krom.
County officials initially tried to block Hawkins’ hiring of Jackson as a part-time employee but later allowed it. While running payroll, Hawkins noticed that the county’s system did not show Jackson’s Memorial Day holiday pay.
She emailed Krom asking that the holiday pay come from the commission’s maintenance budget rather than her own. The response, Hawkins said, did not address the question. Instead, it said Jackson had been an employee of the commission before his termination, that he had been under Krom’s supervision, that Krom was not Hawkins’ employee and that Hawkins needed to “stay in her lane.”
“So instead of answering the question presented … we deflect and tell people to stay in their lane,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins later confirmed that the holiday had been paid; it simply did not appear in the payroll system’s reports.
"It is a fear tactic, a power play."
Hawkins, an elected official who cannot be fired by the commission, said the leverage applied to her takes a different form.
“I’ve been told multiple times: well, we control your budget,” she said. “You shouldn’t live in fear. And that’s what it is. It is a fear tactic, a power play. I control your budget.”
One county employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, put it more starkly.
“I’ve told people I feel like I’m working at Gestapo — that you have to be careful what you say, who you say it to, what you do.” they said,
Asked to rate courthouse morale on a scale of one to 10, Hawkins said she would rate it at a 3.
Asked what she believed was the biggest contributor to low morale, Hawkins said some members of the commission were primarily to blame.
“They’re bullies,” Hawkins said. “There are commissioners that are bullying and using those scare tactics to try to get their way.”
"I’m just not answering your calls"
On July 8, shortly after the public works office closed at 3:30 p.m., Public Works Director Kenny Allen was in his office with two of his supervisors, Kyle Schnichels and Jared Lord, reviewing the next day’s work. All three men separately described what happened next in on-the-record interviews.
The front door opened forcefully — “kind of aggressively,” Schnichels said — and Milburn-Kee came in.
“She came at me with her phone, pointed at me, said, ‘There must be something wrong with your phone,’” Allen said. “And I stood up and said back to her, ‘No, I’m just not answering your calls.’”
Schnichels remembered the words as “Kenny, is your phone broken?”
Asked to characterize her volume, he said, “I would say yelling.” Lord agreed: “Pretty loud and rude … she was angry because Kenny wouldn’t answer the phone.”
From the front door, all three said, Milburn-Kee could see Allen but not the two men seated against the wall. When she reached Allen’s office doorway and saw them, “she kind of took a step back and her tone kind of changed,” Schnichels said. He described her reaction as, “Oh shoot, there’s other people here.”
She then asked Allen about his crew’s hours — 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., he told her. “It was like she was wanting to know why we were still here,” Schnichels said. Allen was blunter: “She was getting ready to rip my butt some more, but she couldn’t in front of them.”
Following a KORA request, the Monitor viewed security video of the incident Allen, Schnichels and Lord described. Although the recording’s audio is poor, the video clearly shows Milburn-Kee holding her phone in front of her and asking, “Is your phone broken?” in a loud voice.
After Milburn-Kee entered Allen’s office doorway, her words were no longer audible, but the tone and volume of her voice changed in the way the three men described.
Allen said he had stopped answering Milburn-Kee’s calls because they had become so frequent that they interfered with his ability to do his job.
The other four commissioners, he said, mostly send an occasional text: “Hey Kenny, we got a tree in the road.”
Hawkins expressed similar frustration with micromanagement and a lack of boundaries, saying Milburn-Kee had requested 6 a.m. meetings with department heads so they would not interfere with her day job.
“Let them go to McDonald’s.”
Hawkins said she raised the subject of pay increases for her employees with one commissioner, noting that some could earn more at Walmart or McDonald’s.
“Let them go to McDonald’s,” the commissioner replied, according to Hawkins.
Kenny Allen, the public works director, said he raised the subject of pay raises for his employees with Milburn-Kee, and she pointed to her own hourly wage.
Milburn-Kee replied, “I make $12 an hour and my husband makes $12 an hour, and we make it just fine,” Allen said.
Allen said many county employees could earn significantly more elsewhere but choose to stay with the county.
“These guys that go out and get their CDL, Class A CDLs, they could go to work making 40, 50 bucks an hour, but they want to work for the county and they have for years and they’re making $17 an hour,” he said.
“And all we’ve done so far is just we’ve run some good people off because of the attitudes,” said one employee who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
“You get a chance of losing more people,” the employee said. “We’ve cut benefits to people that were already not getting paid very much. Benefits is one of the reasons they stayed. There’s all these contributing factors that are causing some real problems.”
Hawkins expressed a similar view of Jackson.
“Will was a dedicated employee and I could easily have seen him being a lifelong employee because he cared about the job he did.”
In response to a Facebook comment that the county should give Jackson his original job back, he replied:
"I wouldn't mind going back if it wasn't as political as it was. I thought I signed up to fix and maintain the courthouse, not what actually happened."
Bob Johnson and Steve Cohen did not respond to request for comments for this article by press time.
