Clark County DA bucks budget cut order

In an eight-page memorandum, Roger told County Manager Don Burnette that "divergent funding" within the criminal justice system is "crippling" his ability to carry out the duties of his office.

Setting up a showdown with the county, Roger described Burnette’s requested budget reductions as "arbitrary and capricious."

"While the courts and the defense structure have received increases, resources of the district attorney have been profoundly slashed," Roger wrote. "Such one-sided treatment ignores the interdependency of the criminal justice system.

"The disparity has produced additional workload and strain upon my office… Because the county has either eliminated or refused to fill over 80 positions, coupled with the county’s decision to fully staff courts and criminal defense functions, my legal obligation to protect the community is jeopardized."

Roger was responding to a Feb. 24 memo Burnette sent to county departments requesting they "prepare personnel reduction plans that will reduce staff costs by 9 percent" to meet continued county budget shortfalls.

The district attorney’s office, which provides legal advice to the county in addition to prosecuting criminals, has 600 employees and an annual budget of $89.7 million.

Although Roger is an elected official and does not answer directly to Burnette, his office is funded with county tax dollars and subject to county oversight.

Roger laid out his case in his response, saying he’s suffered enough cuts and that further reductions to his budget will "contravene the legal obligations" of his office.

He attached a series of graphics to his memo showing the wide range of positions he has lost during the county budget crunch and explaining the potentially dire consequences of additional staff reductions on the office’s ability to fight crime.

Roger also shared horror stories of how cuts have hindered the ability of his staffers to do their jobs.

The loss of positions, in some cases, has resulted in the dismissal of charges, he wrote.

Burnette, however, issued a statement late Thursday defending the order for personnel reductions.

"If we are going to get through this period of unprecedented revenue decline, all county departments and agencies must continue to reduce our expenditures in order to operate within our means," he said.

Roger in his memo said more than a dozen new judges and justices of the peace have been added this year, along with new specialty courts, that also have brought increases in court staff and defense attorneys.

"In contrast, our office has received no appropriations to balance these systematic enlargements," Roger noted. "In fact, our budget has been reduced."

The Clark County Public Defender’s Office has added 10 attorneys in recent years, but the district attorney’s office, in the past two years alone, has lost 23 prosecutor positions, Roger said.

"This translates into 92 criminal prosecutors handling in excess of 60,000 new (adult) cases each year, or 638 cases per deputy," Roger said. "The public defender has 107 attorneys appearing on 10,000 new adult criminal cases annually, or 93 cases per deputy."

Roger added, "There are defense attorneys in both public defender offices that have refused court requests to carry more than five murder cases at one time, while their prosecutorial counterparts are routinely handling in excess of 20 homicide cases."

Deputy public defenders handling juvenile court and child welfare cases also out-number their counterparts in the district attorney’s office, Roger wrote.

While the district attorney’s crime-fighting resources have dwindled, the budget for court-appointed defense lawyers outside the public defender’s office and special public defender’s office has skyrocketed by 400 percent over the past eight years, from $2.3 million to more than $10 million, Roger wrote.

He described the increase as a "runaway pattern of expenditures."

Roger said the end result of all of this is that "victims are being outspent by their assailants in Clark County courts by a margin of 2 to 1."

Public Defender Phil Kohn said he hasn’t seen Roger’s memo and declined to engage in a debate with him on staffing.

"We both do very, very important work in the criminal justice system, but we don’t do the same work," Kohn said. "You can’t compare raw numbers of cases.

"We have to work a case differently. We follow a case all the way through the system so that a client has continuity of counsel. The district attorney doesn’t do that."

Roger contended in his memo to Burnette that staffing in the district attorney’s adult crimes screening unit is below 2002 levels.

"This has created a substantial backlog," he said. "There are currently 6,000 misdemeanor citations and 1,200 misdemeanor submissions which have either not been reviewed or are beyond court return dates."

Roger said 200 felony cases await review, and 1,000 felonies and 1,500 misdemeanor cases are waiting to be typed for filing in court.