Rainy days at the DA's office: Crime victims, defendants pay a price for state's cutbacks

When the General Assembly decided to slash $10 million from the state budget earlier this year, it in turn forced the state District Attorneys Office to dump 9 percent of its staff.

It seems lawmakers did not consider the downstream effects.

The move further dammed the already backlogged and overburdened judicial system by forcing district attorney's offices at the county level to shoulder the added workload.

To start with, the Wayne County District Attorney's Office also covers Lenoir and Greene counties. Now, in addition to its existing workload, DA Matthew Delbridge says his office is saddled with also handling various appeals, motions, writs and special prosecutions, on top of the "increases in digital evidence, sex offender hearings, motions for appropriate relief, expungements and the impending shift of resources needed to address raising the age for juveniles" it already has to contend with.

Those matters apparently used to be handled by the attorneys who were laid off -- those whose expertise in their respective fields of law equipped them to do so -- and who are now plying their trade anywhere but the DA's office.

But the real ramification of the cost-cutting measure might come at the expense of the defendants, and worse, the victims of the crimes the agency is tasked with prosecuting.

"The average prosecutor handles a caseload of over 300 superior court cases per year, and the adding to that the responsibility of an area of expertise they have no experience or training in has the risk of putting both the pursuit of justice and the public at risk," Delbridge told one of our reporters for a story published in today's paper.

So the state saved a few bucks, but in the process killed state employees' jobs, made it more difficult to prosecute criminals and vet cases ahead of trial and asked its remaining state prosecutors -- the vastly overworked men and women in one of the most heavily burdened professions there is -- to do more with less.

Meanwhile our county commissioners practically have to scratch their own eyes out to get hurricane relief funding a full year after Matthew flooded the county. And the county's school board members have to narrowly avoid scratching each other's eyes out over which schools to fund textbooks for.

All the while there sits $1.8 billion -- per Rep. Jimmy Dixon's comments at a recent legislative breakfast held in Wayne County in September -- in the state's "rainy day fund."

Note to self -- Good thing we picked up that London Fog trench coat with the faux fur lining at the thrift store for $6.95 back in the spring.

But in all seriousness, we agree that setting money aside for emergency relief and state aid is the conservative, fiscally responsible thing to do. But cutting $10 million from the state legal and management divisions while holding back nearly $2 billion just in case?

"We have increased our rainy day fund, and government should not be in the saving business. We should not be hoarding your money, but having funds for emergencies and so forth, we have $1.8 billion in the rainy day fund, and we have done that by cutting taxes ---- both individual and sales tax, and corporate tax," Dixon said.

Published in Editorials on October 10, 2017 9:53 PM