A Republican Candidates Forum ahead of the March 3 Primary, organized by the Brown County Republican Party, took place Thursday evening at Victory Life Church. The nearly three-hour event featured introductory and closing comments, along with question-and-answer sessions, with candidates for Brown County Judge, Brown County Treasurer, Brown County Clerk, County Commissioner in Precincts 2 and 4, Justice of the Peace in Precinct 4, and Republican Party Chair.
The following are the excerpts from the questions answered by the County Judge candidates who attended the forum, Patrick Howard and Tom Munson. Incumbent Shane Britton – who on Nov. 24, 2025 was arrested on five charges and has since been suspended without pay by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct – was not on hand at the event.
Patrick Howard
What are the biggest challenges for Brown County and what’s your plan to solve them?
I think the biggest challenge in Brown County is the budget. My plan to solve the budget is I believe in efficiency and fiscal responsibility. I believe there’s a lot of waste in the government and I believe if we take care of the waste that we can take that money and apply it to our priorities. I know from working in the courthouse and working with law enforcement of ways we can save hundreds of thousands of dollars and that’s being conservative by just doing paperwork better with our inmates in the county jail. Every other county does it. I’d like to turn that money back into training for the sheriff’s officers. My fiscal belief is before we ask for any other tax payer dollars – and maybe we’ll have to raise taxes, I hope not – we should first look within our own budget and see where we can better spend our money and then look at outside sources. We need to be aggressive on grants, I believe a good grant writer would pay for themselves very easily. And we certainly don’t need to miss those grants that are the easy ones that are existing.
What prompted you to run for county judge?
About four years ago I thought about running for county judge and I feel like that’s an important place to start. The courthouse employees are doing a good job and you should very proud of them. The problem has been in the county judge’s office. Knowing that, a little while later I was approached by people in the county courthouse and they thought I would be a good candidate because I work well with others, I have good relationships. They wanted help and they approached me. I thought about it and wasn’t sure but in the last six months I saw the deteriorating relationship between the county judge and the other offices in the courthouse. By being in the courthouse I recognized these problems, I saw these problems, I was proactive and said I was going to run and day one and put my name in because I want this job. I was not reacting to anything because I knew there were problems and I wanted to help and l believe I have the right personality and the right skill and the right experience to make immediate changes. When we talk about the rest of the courthouse, we don’t have time, based on what we’ve seen the last eight years, to wait to learn how to do the job. We have to address this immediately because everyday this is costing us money.
As county judge how does your role affect each office in the courthouse?
The role affects everybody in the courthouse. First of all, as a member of county court we’re part of the budget process so we have some purse strings there and that’s part of the process. But more importantly, it’s leadership. Brown County needs ethical leadership and quite frankly Brown County needs a chance from the status quo. Brown County needs a judge who has new ideas and looks outside what we’ve been doing. I had people that I’ve talked to tell me that county judge is a thankless job. Quite frankly I hope that I offer a vision of the future that the generations to come say that’s a job that’s honorable, that’s a job I want, to serve as the county judge for Brown County.
What are your top three priorities to address as county judge?
First, we need to restored dignity to the office. We have a county judge that’s suspended and the judicial parts are very important. We have juvenile cases, a very complicated area of law, and nobody has represented more at-risk children than me in the history of Brown County. We can’t wait to turn a child’s life around. We have people waiting to settle their loved ones’ estates, it needs to get done. There are guardianships where the difference between effective and quick action may literally be the difference between life and death. I know I have the experience to address those very quickly and they need to be addressed. And before we talk about the budget let’s first look at where we’re spending our money and wasting our money. Let’s look at our priorities about where we want to spend better money and then let’s apply that to the budget. Zero-based budgeting is the only way to be efficient. I’m proud of my qualifications and I’m proud to work at the courthouse. The courthouse is my best witness. If anyone thinks I don’t have the ability or the experience to do this job I’d say ask those that I worked with in the courthouse the last 20 years.
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Tom Munson
What are the biggest challenges for Brown County and what’s your plan to solve them?
The biggest challenge for Brown County is really a crisis of leadership from the top. I hate to say this because there’s a lot of good people that work in the county and I know you work hard, but unfortunately the county get a bad wrap. The way business works, the way organizations work, it trickles from the top down. And when there’s a lack of confidence at the top, it affects everybody below. So to me, the biggest issue facing the county is just that – to re-establish confidence in that top level to take the drama away so everybody can see the good job that’s being done by all the employees of the county.
What prompted you to run for county judge?
This was not on my radar, I’ll be real honest with you. It’s something I thought about in the past because I knew I had the credentials, but because I was working full-time there’s no way I could have been county judge. My position at my company is over … and when the indictments came out quite frankly it made me angry. I started thinking about how I’d been thinking about doing something and I could use my business experience, use my legal background, and use my care for my community, and have the opportunity to give back. My wife reminded me of this and I told her I was thinking the same thing. I talked to some people about and decided to throw my hat in and here we are.
As county judge how does your role affect each office in the courthouse?
To me it starts with the budget because to me, the county judge is the budget officer. The county judge is the best position of anyone in the county, outside of the county auditor, to go into each office and take a look at how you’re spending your money, why are you doing it that way, does that make sense, and with a fine tooth comb look through those finances. I don’t mean that in an adversarial manner, I mean it in in a manner of is there a better way? Ultimately, it is that leadership and working collaboratively with the other offices to give the absolute best service for you the taxpayers of the county. Ultimately that’s what we’ll all benefit from. If you literally want change, I’m the person that hasn’t been down there. I’m not the insider that knows, I don’t owe anybody anything. I only owe it to you to do a good job and I owe respect to the people that I work with and the people of the county.
What are your top three priorities to address as county judge?
The first thing I would do is go to work on the budget because to me that’s a mammoth task that deserves a lot of time and requires a lot of time. It also provides an opportunity to work in sync with those other offices so you get to know what they do better. The second thing would be to go look for those grants, and what grants make sense. There are some grants out there we might be able to get, but some of them might come with strings attached. We want to make sure we don’t take grants that we found out because we did that we have to do other things every year that cost money. All that to me needs to be looked at very carefully before you do that. And finally, look at how we can serve you better. Listen to the public, what is it that we can do, what is it that you think is not done well? Let’s try to give the best customer service we possibly can.
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To watch the KOXE live stream of the forum in its entirety, click HERE.