Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer has a small, modest office in the enormous McKean County Courthouse.  The office is located up at least three flights of stairs and down two long hallways, right next to the Probation Department. 

When this reporter sat down in Shaffer’s office around midday on October 15, Shaffer was sitting upright at her desk, seemingly as serious as a heart attack and notably frustrated.

Shaffer said, “I think I said it out loud – it’s an ongoing problem here.” 

Shaffer has been the McKean County DA since 2016, and the issue she is referring to is about, “tip-toeing around the commissioners,” indicating that when people like her speak out about financial compensation issues in the department, county employees are punished for it. 

Shaffer called it, “retaliation in budgeting…they take away money or not approve it,” and she also said that it’s, “absolutely” political, although she doesn’t necessarily think that the split is along party lines. She said “could not stay quiet any longer.”

As far as a specific issue, Shaffer said that last year, the county raised taxes for the public but then gave bonuses to certain people that came from grant money. The grant money was supposed to go for the benefit of people who cannot pay for lawyers for their criminal cases, or “indigent defendants.” 

“That grant money could have been spent on private investigators for major cases, and right now we’ve got three homicides – all indigent defendants whose services were the target of the grant,” said Shaffer, “Or they could have spent it on counselors…anything to help the indigent defense strategy.” 

The commissioners had until December of 2025 to spend the grant money, according to Shaffer, but they “acted like this money was burning a hole in their pocket,” she said, and they ended up spending it last year.

“They spent $40,000 of that money and gave it to people who work in the Public Defender’s Office,” said Shaffer. She added that she was “pulled aside” and “informed” that there was going to be a meeting the next day regarding the bonuses paid to the Public Defender’s Office.

The Chief Public Defender, Philip Clabaugh, who is paid through the county, got a $20,000 bonus, according to Shaffer, and he had gotten a $30,000 raise 18 months prior to that, she said. 

Shaffer went on, “There is another attorney there, who is considered part time, who makes more money than my full-time prosecutor.” 

This other attorney is named Robert Kinnear, according to public records.  

Shaffer continued, “How the part-time public defender makes more than my prosecutor is beyond me,” she said. “I actually lost a 30 year prosecutor a couple of months ago, partly because of salary.”

Shaffer added, “Why is the part time public  defender making more than a full time prosecutor? Additionally, the commissioners voted to pay a law clerk more than the full time prosecutor.  I can only wonder why these financial decisions were made,” Shaffer said.