Cassatt, Biester, Ostrowski file for public administrator's office

The passing of Cape Girardeau County's longtime Public Administrator Lisa Reitzel on April 13, 2024 reopened candidate filing to succeed her in that office. From Monday, May 13 to Friday, May 17, interested candidates could file to run.

An election for a new public administrator will be held during the primary elections on Tuesday, Aug. 6.

The public administrator manages the assets and estates of individuals who have been declared by courts as being unable to take care of them on their own. There are currently around 160 such people in Cape Girardeau County. Public administrators handle all their financial, legal and medical decisions.

Three individuals filed to run for the office. They all needed to provide proof of identification, a $100 filing fee and a signed affidavit from a Missouri-authorized surety company indicating they meet the bond requirements of the Office of Public Administrator.

Laura Cassatt

Laura Cassatt of Oak Ridge currently serves as the acting public administrator, having been sworn in on Monday, April 22. She started working under Reitzel in October 2023. This will be her first time running for political office. She is running as a Republican.

“I’ve always cared for people,” she said. “I always want to take care of others, help where I can.”

Cassatt cited volunteering with her son’s sports programs and helping take care of her ailing grandparents when she was younger as examples of this.

“I still to this day make sure my family is taken care of in any way that I can, and my people that I take care of that are with the public administrator, they’re not just people I am guardian and conservator for. I look at them as my family,” she said. “Sometimes all they have is me, so I make sure to take care of them as I want my family to be taken care of.”

She said she aims to take care of people emotionally, financially, medically and mentally to ensure they can thrive in life.

“We don’t want someone to be always under the guardian and conservator of a public administrator,” Cassatt said. “There are people in life who can’t help it, they kind of have to be because of their mental or emotional state, but there are some people that can be restored and I want anyone and everyone who can be restored and be back with family … I am all for that.”

She said the most important aspect of the office would be making sure people have everything they need to succeed, such as insurance and resources.

A graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Mineral Area College, Cassatt has helped build Drury Hotels across the country and worked with KASTEN masonry sales in both a customer service and freight coordinator position.

Kyla Biester

Kyla Biester, a Jackson resident, is running for elected office for the first time. Like Cassatt, she is also running as a Republican. If elected to the public administrator’s office, she said she would be excited to attend any training or conferences required to do the best job possible.

“I’m passionate about serving vulnerable populations, so when the opportunity presented itself I just decided to run,” she said. “I want to make a positive impact in the lives of people who aren’t able to take care of themselves fully.”

Biester worked as a children’s service worker in the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services for a decade between 2014 and the start of May 2024.

She earned her bachelors degree in human environmental studies from Southeast Missouri State University.

If elected, she said she would aim to find the impacted individuals more resources, since they often do not have money for much beyond basic necessities, and would base programs off of how other organizations serving vulnerable populations operate.

Biester said it would be important to make good decisions for those who cannot make decisions for themselves and to ensure their needs are met. This ties into her role working with foster children, where she licensed and maintained relatives’ homes for them.

“When children come into foster care, we try to place them with relatives ... but when we can’t find a relative we place them in a foster home, and I feel like that is what this is,” Biester said. “Essentially, when there isn’t someone who is willing or able to have guardianship over someone who needs a guardian, then they look to a public administrator.”

Andrew Ostrowski

Andrew Ostrowski, who lives in Cape Girardeau, filed to run for the office as a Libertarian.

Ostrowski ran in two races in the April 2, 2024 Cape Girardeau County elections. He ran for the Cape Special Road District, finishing last among three candidates with 11.72% of the vote. He also received 21 votes as a write-in candidate for Cape Girardeau City Council Ward 3, or 8.27% of the overall vote.

Ostrowski had filed to run for the Cape Girardeau County Commission 2nd District seat, though he withdrew from that race to run for public administrator.

“I really don’t want to be in the spotlight or anything. I just want to get things done,” he said of his decision to run for a different office.

Ostrowski carried over the same platform from his county commissioner candidacy: adding public transportation routes, eliminating property taxes and developing a special school district for students with special needs. He said he would add those goals onto the public administrator position.

“… They have to become a whole person and that’s how it all interacts,” he said. “… That platform is adding more responsibilities to the public administrator.”

Ostrowski said this would integrate the people the office serves into the community.