Brown County -
The Brown County District Attorney's Office tells Action 2 News without state funding to give assistant prosecutors better pay, its backlog of thousands of cases will grow and some cases may never even be charged.
The D.A. hopes the governor's budget proposal will ease these problems.
Cases pile up daily on Brown County District Attorney Dave Lasee's desk.
Last year, his office reached its largest caseload ever: 1,600 felonies and between 3,500 and 4,000 misdemeanors.
He has just twelve state-funded assistant prosecutors and one county-funded assistant prosecutor to handle all those cases.
"There's backlog of cases from anywhere from a few months to several months, even a year old. We obviously do try to prioritize and take the most serious cases first to make sure the public safety issues are addressed," says Lasee.
He estimates 2,000 cases are waiting to be charged out.
And because of a lack of staffing, he says several less serious cases may never make it to a courtroom.
"As those cases age, and as the offenders that committed those crimes go a year or six months, nine months without committing another violation, it's quite possible that we'll evaluate that case and make a determination that it's no longer appropriate for prosecution," Lasee says.
According to the Legislative Audit Bureau, the Brown County DA's Office needs an additional twelve prosecutors to meet demand.
The governor's budget proposal doesn't add new positions, but it does add roughly $4.4 million over the next two years to fund pay raises for current prosecutors to keep them from leaving for the higher-paying private sector.
"Retention has been a key issue for assistant district attorneys statewide. And they're in a position that, given their student loans and given the low salaries relative to the private sector, they have to make tough choices about whether they can continue as prosecutors, or whether they need to go somewhere else to put food on the table for their families," says Lasee.
He says assistant DAs make about $49,000 per year to start, and there haven't been new positions or raises in a decade.
"That's not a bad starting salary. That's not the concern. The concern is that there are a number of attorneys who have 10 years' experience who are just over that level," he says.
The Wisconsin Legislature approved an unfunded prosecutor pay progression plan in April of 2012.
Lasee hopes this time lawmakers will approve the money, helping ensure all his cases make it to court.
