Her husband's law practice was shrinking, having lost its contract with Taylorsville.
Her office was hiring, having landed a federal grant to revamp the criminal-justice system.
So without looking any further than her husband's firm, Salt Lake County District Attorney Lohra Miller snatched up three laid-off employees and, in doing so, stirred up a whirlwind of questions about whether those hires were appropriate.
The Republican D.A. readily acknowledges she picked a prosecutor and two legal secretaries who once were on her husband's payroll. And no, she says, the county positions weren't advertised.
Improper? Miller says no.
The D.A.'s hires came through a $745,000 federal stimulus grant that will help the county, during the next two years, design and implement a speedier justice system.
Because the jobs connected with the grant are temporary (two years), Miller was not required to go through the county's competitive-hiring process. Instead, she plucked three people from the law firm she once ran with her husband.
Holly Petrik was brought on as a prosecutor. Chenille Hutto and Melinda Losee were hired as caseworkers.
"They are incredibly qualified," Miller said "This was a circumstance that we don't get very often in government -- that is, to know somebody, to know how hard they work and to know what their job skills are before hiring them. That is a great opportunity."
But the hires haven't gone unnoticed by critics, who accuse Miller of crossing a fine ethical line between hiring qualified candidates and helping out friends.
"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should," said Greg Skordas, a defense attorney and lifelong Democrat who announced plans last week to run against Miller this year for district attorney. "These candidates may be the greatest, but we will never know because no one was able to fairly compete for the positions."
It's a prickly political time for hiring anyone within county government. Officials have trimmed the overall work force by 300-plus employees and left in place a hiring freeze to weather the worst economic storm since the Great Depression.
The D.A.'s new positions dodge that hiring freeze because they are funded by an outside grant.
County Council Chairman Joe Hatch, a Democrat, said Miller's hiring decision raises serious questions about appearance. He suspects the public's initial reaction will be: "Give me a break."
Hatch said the prudence of her picks will be a "judgment the public will make in the election."
On the other side of the partisan aisle, County Councilman Max Burdick, a Republican, defended Miller as having picked three qualified candidates in a short amount of time (the federal grant came in late November; the employees were supposed to start work in January).
That said, it doesn't look good, he concedes. Still, "it was a good hire."
Miller insists she made the right call. The stimulus not only hired three qualified workers, Miller said, but also spared them from unemployment.
"The money that we got the grant from was to create jobs," she said. "Here we had a situation where three people were out of a job -- [they] had been laid off -- and the grant did exactly what it was supposed to do."
