photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

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

One of Douglas County District Attorney Dakota Loomis’ first hires when he took over from the previous DA was his wife — at the rate of $38 an hour, according to figures provided by Douglas County.

Loomis’ wife, Krystal Boxum-Loomis, has so far been paid $26,201 by the county. She was hired as Loomis’ “transition director,” a position that did not exist under the administration of former DA Suzanne Valdez.

Loomis took office in January after a landslide election victory. Seven months later, his wife is still employed by his office.

In an email to the Journal-World, Loomis described his wife’s role as “a temporary, short-term position that is being funded out of a Temporary Office Clerk position that we did not fill and that was budgeted for $26,865.”

Loomis said the responsibilities of his wife’s role “related solely to the transition between administrations and will not impact the 2026 budget or taxpayers.” Loomis recently requested an additional $215,000 from the Douglas County Commission for staffing needs.

Loomis’ own salary is $191,859.

When asked if he had any nepotism concerns about hiring a person whose income would directly benefit his own household, Loomis said that he did not.

“All hiring decisions have been based upon a person’s skill set, temperament, and commitment to protecting Douglas County families,” he said in an email, noting that his staff has spent “the past six months identifying and addressing issues that had long been ignored or neglected.”

During his campaign, Loomis had been highly critical of how the office had been run by fellow Democrat Valdez, taking particular aim at the experience level of prosecutors and overall professionalism in her office, and he said at that time that it could take years to repair “the damage that has been done.”

“My priority from day one has been to recruit and retain qualified, professional, and trusted employees to get our office back on track,” he said in the email to the Journal-World, adding that he had so far hired six “seasoned attorneys.”

Nepotism, no matter a person’s qualifications, is generally frowned upon in government jobs, if not outright prohibited. In many places, including the State of Kansas, it is illegal, the concern being not only personal enrichment and favoritism, but also issues that arise when one relative is supervising another. Elected officials, however, are generally not bound by such rules to the same degree.

It is not yet clear whether Douglas County has policies against nepotism in place, nor whether they would apply to an elected official, like the district attorney. The Journal-World has reached out to Douglas County for information regarding its particular rules but has not heard back.

In an email to his staff in January, Loomis told employees that his wife would be working with the office for “the next few months to guide the backend office and operations portion of the transition.” He touted her “extensive experience” working with organizations during leadership changes, but did not give specific examples of such activity beyond a reference to “working with local, state, and federal government partners as well as the private nonprofit sector” and being the director of operations for an unnamed “trade association.”

Her only apparent experience in a DA’s office was in Shawnee County, where Dakota Loomis also had worked. That experience was nearly a decade ago when she worked as a victim witness specialist, a position from which she was fired for what then-district attorney Chad Taylor deemed unprofessional conduct.

Krystal Boxum-Loomis, then known as Krystal L. Boxum-Debolt, sued, along with her colleague and close friend Lisa Moore, claiming gender discrimination and retaliation for opposition to gender and race discrimination. A federal jury, however, disagreed.

Taylor had maintained that the women were forced out because of distasteful emails that they had sent on the county’s email system and for contributing to dysfunction in the victim-witness unit.

Moore also has been hired by Loomis. She is now Loomis’ chief of staff, a “newly developed position,” as he described it, at a salary of $135,000 a year.

When asked whether he had any concerns about the women’s conduct at a different DA’s office, Loomis defended the women and said they had been let go for entirely other — and improper — reasons.

“Krystal Boxum-Loomis and Lisa Moore did the bravest things I have ever personally witnessed and 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,” Loomis said in an email. “For that act of courage, both were retaliated against and forced out of their jobs. I 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.”