Correction (1/11): we have corrected "today" in the second paragraph to "that day."
Correction (1/14): Corrected Rebecca Woolley's name.
Correction (1/28, 1/30) Corrected Rebecka Woolley's name.
A expanded, revised story will appear in Wednesday's issue.
Laclede County Public Administrator Annette Charles will resign Feb. 2 after five years in the elected position.
During the Laclede County Commission’s budget hearing for Charles’ office – which Charles and deputy public administrator Rebecka Woolley attended – Presiding Commissioner Randy Angst read Charles’s resignation letter, which he said was received that day.
The public administrator, the Laclede County Clerk’s website noted, acts as a guardian for those mentally or physically disabled.
Charles’s letter, as read by Angst, expressed her satisfaction with serving the county’s vulnerable population but expressed a decision to focus on herself and her family. Her letter read that she trusted she left the position better than she found it.
Charles expressed confidence in Woolley as a replacement for her position. Angst recommended those interested in the interim position send a letter to the County Commission.
Charles was sworn in as the county’s public administrator in 2021 after serving as interim administrator following Zane McCaslin’s resignation earlier that year. She had previously served in the public administrator’s office for four years.
She later won a 2022 election to serve a two-year unexpired term and won another election in 2024, the Record had written previously.
Laclede County Clerk Linda Cansler later wrote to the Record that Charles’s letter had been sent to Governor Mike Kehoe’s office and the process of fulfilling the vacancy had begun. Both the county’s Democrat and Republican central committees can send a recommendation to the governor.
The position, she also said, would be included in the August and November 2026 elections to elect a public administrator for an unexpired term of two years.
The Record will have more on this story in Wednesday’s issue.
