Gov. Jared Polis appointed a Boulder prosecutor to become the next district attorney of the San Luis Valley on Monday, as the area attempts to move beyond the tumultuous tenure of its former chief law enforcement official.

Anne Kelly, a senior deputy district attorney in the Boulder-based 20th Judicial District, will take over six-county 12th Judicial beginning Sept. 1.

She had been part of a statewide effort to provide prosecutor services in the valley after the mid-July resignation of her predecessor, Alonzo Payne. Payne, who’d been elected in 2020 on a reform platform, was facing a recall election and had been the subject of several complaints to the state Attorney General’s Office for his interactions with victims.

Upon arriving in San Luis Valley to help fill in for the departed Payne, Kelly decided to apply to take on the job for the duration of Payne’s term, according to a statement by the Boulder district attorney’s office, which endorsed that application. A five-person panel, which included former Gov. Bill Ritter and three other former Colorado district attorneys, reviewed applications and recommended finalists to Polis’ office.

In a separate statement, Polis said valley residents had made their voices heard about Payne. He said he was confident that Kelly would take “the concerns of law enforcement, commissioners and victims” and work to address them.

Kelly said she was honored to take over the job and that her “top priority is to restore trust in the Office of the District Attorney and the criminal justice system.”

“Restoring trust requires transparency, constant engagement and implementation of effective systems,” she said, “while prioritizing being accessible to the community including law enforcement, victims, community groups, and defense attorneys.”

It was Payne’s interaction with the community, and particularly victims, that had prompted the recall campaign and doomed his tenure. A seven-month investigation by Attorney General Phil Weiser into how Payne had treated victims ended with Weiser determining there were systemic problems in Payne’s office that he did not address. Weiser called those issues, and the lack of effort to correct them, “deeply problematic.”

In his resignation letter, Payne cast the controversy as calculated pushback against his reformist platform.