photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

New Douglas County District Attorney Dakota Loomis takes the oath of office on Jan. 13, 2025.

Although Douglas County District Attorney Dakota Loomis said earlier this year that his wife’s “transition director” position with his office would be temporary, she was still on his payroll a year after his election — a situation that the former deputy DA said has been bad for the office.

Loomis initially declined over the summer to answer questions about his wife’s expected end date, but, when pressed months later, he told the Journal-World in a November email that “Krystal’s employment will end in 2025.” In January, his staff were told that the DA’s spouse would be working there for just “a few months.”

In July, Loomis said that the $38 per hour salary of his wife, Krystal Boxum-Loomis, was being funded out of “a Temporary Office Clerk position that we did not fill and that was budgeted for $26,865.”

County payroll records indicate that as of Nov. 14, Boxum-Loomis has been paid $33,649 by taxpayers. Loomis told the Journal-World in July that he did not have any nepotism concerns about hiring a person whose income would directly benefit his own household.

photo by: Contributed

David Greenwald

His wife’s role — combined with her close friend being paid a six-figure salary to be Loomis’ chief of staff — has been concerning to some in the office, including Loomis’ onetime right-hand man, former Deputy DA David Greenwald, whom Loomis abruptly fired in August. Loomis did not indicate why Greenwald had been let go, but Greenwald said he had been told it was a matter of “differing management styles.”

Greenwald, who now works for the Wyandotte County DA, acknowledged that nepotism is not illegal for elected officials but “there are anti-nepotism policies for government agencies for a reason,” he told the Journal-World.

“Hiring should be based on merit, not based on family relations,” he said. “More importantly, when someone has hired a spouse or other family member, it makes the rest of the staff uncomfortable because the nepotism hire has a disproportionate amount of power and influence. There is no way to disagree without suffering the wrath of the employer.”

According to Greenwald and other former employees, who asked not to be identified based on employment concerns, Loomis’ wife is not just a transition director, but has effectively been running the DA’s Office with her close friend, Lisa Moore, who was given the new title “chief of staff” and an annual salary of $135,000, which Greenwald and the others noted was significantly more than many attorneys in the office made.

“The core management team is Dakota, Krystal and Lisa,” Greenwald said. “Those are the three that would make all policy decisions within the DA’s office.” He added that he didn’t “believe that Lisa or Krystal have the qualifications to do so.”

“They are very out of date on best practices, emerging trends in DA’s offices, and lack the basic understanding of how attorneys do their jobs,” he said.

When asked if the women would like to address concerns that staff might have about their professionalism, Loomis declined to respond.

He also declined to address whether he had concerns about his wife and her close friend being in such high-profile roles in the office. In July, though, he had said, “All hiring decisions have been based upon a person’s skill set, temperament, and commitment to protecting Douglas County families,” and in a message to his staff he generally touted his wife’s experience working with organizations during leadership changes.

At that time he said he “would be lucky if everyone who worked with me at the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office had the level of moral character and strength that Ms. Moore and Ms. Boxum-Loomis possess.”

Loomis, a Democrat, campaigned heavily on the idea that the DA’s Office under prior management was poorly run and that his first order of business, if elected, would be to restore professionalism and community trust.

As the Journal-World reported, Boxum-Loomis and Moore have only brief experience working in a prosecutor’s office. Back in 2010 the two worked, alongside Loomis, in the Shawnee County District Attorney’s Office as victim advocates — jobs they were forced out of for what then-District Attorney Chad Taylor deemed unprofessional conduct, including distasteful emails that they had sent on the county’s email system and for contributing to dysfunction in the victim-witness unit. The emails included references to people as “ugly,” “little brain,” “butter face with braces” and “douche,” along with references to being drunk and hitting on people.

Boxum-Loomis, then known as Krystal L. Boxum-Debolt, sued, along with Moore, claiming gender discrimination and retaliation for opposition to gender and race discrimination. A federal jury, however, found the claims baseless, and the court ordered the two women to pay the defendants’ attorney fees. The demand for fees was later dropped in exchange for a promise not to appeal.

In a 2015 deposition in the case, Loomis testified that he met Krystal when he was working at the Shawnee County DA’s Office in 2009. He resigned from that office in 2011, in part because of “the situation between the district attorney and … my girlfriend,” he said. Loomis then worked as communications director for the Kansas Democratic Party before he was fired in 2014 for describing three rural communities as leading contenders for the “most craphole small towns” in Kansas.

Loomis told the Journal-World in July that his wife and Moore were forced out of their Shawnee County jobs as “retaliation” after they “stood up to their supervisor who was endangering an on-going murder case by exploiting the eighteen-year-old, non-English speaking wife of a homicide victim and their eighteen-year-old co-worker.”

That coworker, Mary Morales-Glasscock, is now also employed as Loomis’ executive assistant.

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