DA to County: Stop Politicizing The Funding Crisis, Hurling Insults

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — A public budget debate sparked this week between the County of Riverside and District Attorney Mike Hestrin has escalated into a war of words between several parties involved.

It all started on Tuesday, at the board of supervisors meeting, as the county discussed the budget.

The D.A.'s office was staring at an $18 million hole in the 2016-17 fiscal year. During the final budget hearing Tuesday, Hestrin requested an additional $12 million to cover his anticipated expenditures, indicating he could get by without the full $18 million. Grappling with deficit spending and a need to hold county reserves above $150 million, the board agreed to allocate only $6 million.

On Thursday, the county issued a press release, publicly calling on the D.A. to rethink his budget strategy. In that release, several of the supervisors were quoted expressing criticism-- whose statements were, in turn, denounced by another board member.

TIMELINE:

• Board Approves Budget, Denies Additional Funding Request by DA [UPDATED]
• CLASH: RivCo Supervisors Call on District Attorney to Rethink Budget Strategy
• Lake Elsinore Supervisor Distances Self From County, DA Budget Battle

Hestrin, however, is standing by his decision to rein in expenditures by discontinuing some after- hours assistance to law enforcement agencies.

He put area law enforcement agencies on notice Wednesday that to address budget woes, prosecutors would no longer assist with search warrant affidavits after regular business hours. The D.A. said the effort should yield about $500,000 in savings.

Following both the county press release and Kevin Jeffries' statement, Hestrin issued his own public statement, as follows:

The news release issued on July 28, 2016, by the county once again highlights the lack of communication between the Executive Office and the Board of Supervisors as well as a misunderstanding of what our office does.

The District Attorney’s Office has been in consistent communication and had several meetings over the last months and weeks with the Executive Office, and we had already scheduled a meeting next week to discuss cuts and additional solutions to pay for payroll and services. We have repeatedly provided the Executive Office with the needed cuts to services that would have to occur to find the $12.25 million necessary to maintain our existing staffing needs and public safety services, and provided the Chairman and other Board members with a budget book setting out our planned cuts should there be no additional funding available. This is not new information.

To contain overtime costs which will help stave off layoffs, the District Attorney’s Office restricted search warrant reviews to office hours and suspended all paid off-duty and nighttime search warrant reviews previously provided as a courtesy to our law enforcement partners and judges. These cuts are projected to save more than $500,000.When we are looking at not being able to make payroll, we cannot justify providing courtesy prosecution services. Search warrant reviews are not legally mandated and are not provided by all county DA’s offices.

Should our budget situation change, we will immediately restore those prosecution services that we can afford. We also suspended all paid overtime pay for deputy district attorney call-outs to homicide and officer-involved shooting scenes.

Because county negotiated MOUs require payment for search warrant and homicide pager duty and nighttime and off-duty responses to homicide and officer-involved shooting scenes, members of our management team are now volunteering to assume these additional work responsibilities throughout the county. This is just the first in a series of steps our office will be taking in order to try to meet our budget and close the unfunded $12.25 million inherited structural deficit, while continuing to protect the communities we serve.

Politicizing the funding crisis in public safety and hurling insults during public meetings and in county news releases does not serve what should be our mutual goal to find savings while protecting public safety.

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— City News Service contributed to this report.