Jan 7, 2020 2 min read

Washington County government began a new chapter Monday morning with the new chairwoman of the board of commissioners introducing a new county solicitor.

The seat on the dais in the public meeting room of the Courthouse Square office building formerly occupied by attorney J. Lynn DeHaven remained vacant before a salary board reorganizational meeting at 10 a.m.

But when newly elected board Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan convened an agenda-setting session a half-hour later in the seventh-floor conference room, she introduced department heads to Jana Phillis Grimm as the representative of the law firm Steptoe and Johnson of Southpointe as the new solicitor.

Grimm’s compensation was not discussed at the agenda-setting meeting.

“The contract is not complete yet,” Irey Vaughan said after the conclusion of a closed session. Also part of the contract will be the specific services the law firm will be providing to the county.

The commissioner spoke as early as October with an attorney interested in the solicitorship, and she said she later discussed the position with an additional four firms.

A member of both the Washington and Allegheny county bar associations, Grimm is a graduate of Thiel College, in Greenville, Mercer County, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Grimm has been working for Steptoe and Johnson since 2014, after an 11-year stint at Eckert Seamans Cherin and Mellott, LLC.

According to her biography on the law firm’s website, she has worked in the area of municipal law and represented employers in union representation elections; unfair labor practice charges, collective bargaining negotiations; employee grievance arbitrations; age, sex, and race discrimination claims before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission; and alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

She has counseled in employment-related matters including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, reductions in force, hiring and terminations, handbooks and policies; and unemployment and harassment litigation.

Grimm is chairwoman of the board of trustees of the Washington Health System Foundation and chairwoman of the planned giving committee and was a member of the board of directors of Southwestern Communities Chamber of Commerce and past president of the board of directors of Leadership of Washington County.