A NEW ERA

By ANDREW MCGINN

a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Katlynn Gannon was on her way into a college final when her phone rang.

It was the doctor’s office with news that they had discovered a mass in her brain.

Gannon tried asking questions, but there was no other way to put it: She had a brain tumor.

“I took a couple of seconds in the hallway,” she explained recently.

And then she walked into her Business Math final and got an A.

The tumor was ultimately found to be benign, but even three brain surgeries couldn’t stop Gannon from earning two bachelor’s degrees — one in accounting, the other in business administration — in just three and a half years from AIB College of Business in Des Moines, where she also played volleyball.

Now 25, the Rippey native would have been a strong selection to be Greene County High School’s 2019 commencement speaker even if she did nothing more than that.

But then she unseated a 31-year incumbent from office this past November to become Greene County’s first new county treasurer in a generation and the youngest elected official at the Greene County courthouse.

She also got married and bought a house.

Forget what you think you know about millennials — Katlynn Gannon-Mechaelsen is #shatteringpreconceivednotions.

“It’s OK if our life slows down for a year,” Mechaelsen confessed last week as she neared the end of her first month in office.

Less than 10 years out of high school herself, Mechaelsen will indeed address the graduates this spring at Greene County High School’s commencement — by then, hopefully, the treasurer’s office will have used up the last of the envelopes with her predecessor’s name on them.

As Mechaelsen has discovered, a dynasty can’t be undone in a day.

Her predecessor in the treasurer’s office, Democrat Donna Lawson, was on track to become the longest-serving treasurer in county history until Mechaelsen’s stunning upset in November.

Simply put, in Greene County, it’s hard to remember a time when Lawson, 75, wasn’t treasurer.

By the time Mechaelsen was even born, Lawson was already midway through a second term.

The idea of a first-time Republican candidate sending her packing — let alone a first-time candidate 50 years her junior rumored to be “medically unstable” because of previous surgeries — was almost unthinkable.

In reality, the race in November was so narrow that Lawson requested a recount.

Mechaelsen came out on top, but only by a single vote: 2,028 votes to Lawson’s 2,027. Had they tied, the county supervisors would have been forced to draw the next treasurer out of a hat.

“I do feel like I have to prove myself to half the county,” said Mechaelsen, a 2011 graduate of East Greene High School.

“That,” she added, “will come with time.”

For now, there have been rubber stamps to reorder and names on bank accounts to change.

In their down time, Mechaelsen and her staff have taken to blacking out Lawson’s name on envelopes with a marker.

And then there are those mysterious creatures who somehow missed the election altogether.

They saunter into the treasurer’s office still expecting to see Lawson, only to ask, “What happened?”

Uh.

Democracy?

“Did you not read the newspaper or social media at all?” Mechaelsen finds herself wondering.

“I don’t say that,” she said. “I see it as an opportunity to start fresh. They don’t have an opinion already made.”

And if they do, she hopes to change it.

“I try to introduce myself to everyone,” Mechaelsen explained.

“My generation has a bad rap,” she said. “I’m a hard worker and I do respect the elder. I’m not arrogant. I’m willing to admit my faults.”

One thing that should endear  her almost immediately is that she plans to learn the job of everyone in her office to avoid closures.

In Greene County, the treasurer’s office also doubles as a state driver’s license service center.

In the past, she said, if driver license deputy Maralie Ruth had to be gone, no one issued licenses.

“That’s what we’re trying to avoid,” she said.

Mechaelsen said she hopes to start issuing driver’s licenses as soon as her fingerprints are approved.

But like most people of a certain age, Mechaelsen is also unafraid of technology, and she hopes to use more of it in the office.

“She’s here to teach us how to use the computers more efficiently,” said Denise Stofer, a longtime employee in the treasurer’s office.

Before January, the treasurer’s semiannual report typically took Stofer a day and a half to prepare.

Mechaelsen ran the report — and also had it tweaked — in 20 minutes.

“It’s a new learning curve for all of us,” Stofer said.

Mechaelsen said she plans to use her office’s website — all counties in Iowa have one at iowatreasurers.org — “as much as possible” to announce office closures and pass along information.

There’s little point in changing things, though, just to change them.

“Some things are better left the way they are,” Mechaelsen said.

The county’s delinquent tax sale isn’t likely to change anytime soon, she said, despite it flaring up as a campaign issue in November.

Currently, the sale is open only to bidders who attend in person.

Mechaelsen said she wanted to explore putting the sale online.

Lawson countered that putting the tax sale online would attract out-of-state investors with little to no interest in Greene County. Properties they snatch up, Lawson predicted, could languish for years.

“Most of the investors just want the interest for it,” Mechaelsen said. “They don’t want the parcel.

“As treasurer, my job is to collect property taxes.”

Mechaelsen said she still wants to explore putting the sale online at some point. Greene County, she said, is among a shrinking number of counties with an in-person tax sale.

“We just don’t want to be left in the dust,” Mechaelsen said.

She also hopes to revive her office’s investment committee, which she said hasn’t met in some time.

County funds are currently divided between all three Jefferson banks — Home State Bank, Peoples Bank and Wells Fargo.

Mechaelsen believes that’s best practice, but she also wants to know what money can be moved around to generate more interest income for the county.

Perhaps more than anything, Mechaelsen offers a fresh set of eyes.

And that goes beyond crunching numbers.

She can now view Greene County through the eyes of someone who moved away, worked as the controller at an accounting firm and then decided that Des Moines wasn’t where she wanted to be.

In 2018, she and husband Marcus — a Hamilton County native who played basketball at AIB and has since joined the staff at Home State Bank — found a house that’s a mere two and a half miles from where she grew up.

“Moving away,” she said, “shows you how great Greene County is.”