ORLANDO, Fla. – Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell held a news conference Wednesday morning where she addressed a sudden and drastic change to the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) federal funding contract that supports victim advocates in the Ninth Judicial Circuit.
Worrell explained that the VOCA application process began in October.
“That application was accepted by the attorney general’s office and our deliverables were approved. The contract was issued and our office signed it,” Worrell said. “And then without warning or explanation, that contract was changed. In December, our approved contract was unilaterally rewritten.”
Worrell said the modification slashed funding for domestic violence victim services by approximately 81%, reducing the number of victims the office is permitted to serve from 3,750 to just 689. At the same time, Worrell said that Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office added new, “unrealistic deliverables,” requiring the office to serve 1,000 child abuse or neglect victims despite only 46 such cases being handled the previous year.
“These numbers are detached from real data, unsupported by case volume, and impossible to meet,” Worrell said. “Every other judicial circuit in Florida received VOCA funding based on actual crime data. Ours was the only one subjected to arbitrary and unachievable requirements.”
Despite repeated requests for clarification and meetings from December through February, Worrell said the Attorney General’s Office declined to explain the rationale for the changes and instructed the Ninth Circuit to sign the modified contract or lose funding.
She called on the attorney general’s office to “restore our VOCA contract to its original approved terms based on real victim data” and urged the public to demand fairness in victim services funding.
The attorney general’s office sent News 6 a statement following Worrell’s news conference on Wednesday.
“The VOCA grant funds are available whenever State Attorney Worrell is ready to sign the contract. In fact, the Office of the Attorney General is offering more than double the amount that her office requested last year.
We hope she does the right thing and accepts the nearly half-million dollars our office is willing to provide on behalf of crime victims.”
Isabel Kilman, Deputy Press Secretary, Florida Office of the Attorney General
[WATCH: Triple shooting suspect defied treatment order, Worrell says]
Last month, Worrell marked her first year back in office with another news conference. In it, she emphasized a significant reduction in the Ninth Circuit’s backlog of non-arrest cases and described a tense but not acrimonious relationship with state figures typically critical of her, such as Uthmeier and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“I’ve reached out to the attorney general, as well as the governor’s office, on multiple occasions, asking for meetings. I will do that again before I go to Tallahassee,” Worrell said in January.
You can read Worrell’s letter to the attorney general and other documents in the media player below.
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