On paper, the latest Santa Clara County budget cuts may seem like another depressing day in modern American governance: County leaders have established preliminary budget reduction targets of $18.5 million for the District Attorney’s Office and $4.5 million for the Public Defender’s Office.
Both offices have addressed their respective targets with a set of tiered, prioritized proposals that strike a balance that will provide for both a vigorous prosecution of alleged crimes and a robust defense of those accused. But the size of these targets requires cuts that would deeply damage the criminal justice system, for everybody: victims, defendants and you.
Inflicting the full cuts would force an overloaded, understaffed DA’s Office to decline prosecution for thousands of crimes. It would push public defender caseloads to unacceptably high levels. Prosecutors and public defenders are adversarial in court, often battling over the fate of a defendant. Today, we are standing alongside each other to respectfully ask the Board of Supervisors and County Executive James Williams to consider other ways to balance the county budget, rather than making drastic, destructive and disproportionate cuts which would threaten public safety and undermine confidence in our legal system.
Here are the impacts the community will suffer if the deepest cuts are implemented:
Misdemeanors represent more than half of the approximately 40,000 cases the DA’s Office reviews each year. If these cuts go through, the office will no longer have the staff to be able to prosecute all misdemeanors, potentially having to refuse such cases as driving under the influence, misdemeanor domestic violence, misdemeanor sex crimes and a variety of quality-of-life crimes.
The advice public defenders provide to poor, immigrant clients ensures that a minor, nonviolent charge does not result in deportation. Public defenders protect the gravely disabled who are being conserved and they give voice to the innocent. The risk to these vital services is real. Look at San Francisco County, where the public defender was recently forced to decline representation of indigent defendants because of budget constraints.
There are other, less destructive ways to meet the fiscal challenge the county faces. Avoiding the most impactful cuts in our two offices would require identifying about $15 million in other parts of the county’s $5.4 billion general fund budget, representing just 0.3% of the total. We presented alternative ideas to the county executive and board to meet the budget challenge. That challenge can be met in a measured way that preserves public safety, vital defense services and the county’s other important services.
Seeking justice is complicated, difficult and it’s not free. The staff of the Public Defender’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office are in your courts every day fighting to ensure our legal system is fair and our community remains one of the safest in the nation.
For years that system has been both fiscally responsible and effective. Guns have been taken from those who pose a danger to the community. The rights of the innocent have been protected while those who have broken the law are held accountable. Our mental health courts have provided treatment for our neighbors in need, and together we have sought the release of prisoners serving sentences that would not be imposed today.
These are programs and policies that make Santa Clara County a place that others look to for inspiration and best practices.
We understand the county’s budget needs to be smaller. We don’t believe its commitment to justice needs to be smaller.
Jeff Rosen is serving his fourth term as the elected District Attorney of Santa Clara County. He has been a prosecutor in the community for more than 30 years. Steven Otero is vice president of the Association of Santa Clara County Government Attorneys.