The State Legislature’s Legislative Council created a study committee to evaluate the district attorney funding formula, and the first of four committee meetings occurred at the Capitol last week.
For almost four decades Wisconsin has struggled with the model used to allocate prosecution resources across the state’s many offices.
The current funding formula assigns the available number of full-time employment positions based on caseload as an empirical measure of need.
According to some, the evolution of a prosecutor’s practice has rendered the metric obsolete, as it fails to account for changes in the nature of the role and the added responsibilities these attorneys now face.
“Wisconsin had the right intention, objective statewide allocation, but the inputs and follow-through have not kept pace with the work,” said Mindy Tempelis, president of the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association, during a presentation at the committee’s first meeting.
During the meeting, Tempelis identified three “interlocking failures” that have undermined the system: the nature of the work changing faster than the system around it, the Legislature’s tendency to fund only part of measured needs, and the measure itself no longer being “trustworthy enough to tell us exactly how large the gap is or where positions belong.”
“There has always been a gap,” she said.
“Examining whether the formula accurately reflects the offices’ actual workloads and whether it created unintended consequences that do not serve the interests of justice,” will be a lead objective of the committee, said Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison), the study committee’s chair.
Tusler is joined by Vice-Chair Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), Rep. Ann Roe (D-Janesville), Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay), and subject matter experts like State Public Defender Jennifer Bias, several district attorneys, and professionals in law enforcement.
The committee hopes to recommend legislation, said Tusler.
“We need to pass something that is passable,” he said. “We’ve had a divided government for the last 8 years in Wisconsin, (so) we need to think of both sides and both parties,” he emphasized.
“Whether you want more diversions or more aggressive prosecutions, the solution isn’t fewer prosecutors,” said Winn Collins, deputy administrator of legal services for the DA’s association, during a presentation at the meeting.
“When you have 300 cases you can’t be creative,” he said. “A prosecutor is left with the option to just say what’s my standard offer in this kind of case.”
Tempelis and Collins discussed prosecutor pay, along with allocated positions. Collins attributed the comparatively low pay of government work, coupled with the emotional and time demands of the role, as drivers of the issues elected district attorneys face with retention. The issue isn’t volume of positions alone, but what those positions pay, according to the pair.
The result is often a prosecutor core that is young and less experienced said Collins. “People who have less time and people with less time, they’re going to make more irrational decisions.”
Evaluating cases for specialty dockets, thousands of hours of digital discovery generated by now commonplace security camera footage and body cameras, and victim communication under Marcy’s Law have all added to the workload of those in criminal justice, the presenters said.
They also noted more obscure pressures.
How law enforcement is funded impacts caseloads, Tempelis said, referencing law-enforcement grants that underwrite specific types of policing.
“When law-enforcement gets grants to do specific kinds of police work, it generates more cases,” she said, pointing to the increase in cases based on grant money earmarked for tactics like OWI checkpoints.
Committee member Wall said the criminal justice system was not set up for “rational management.”
“If we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t start with 71 different nexuses around the state,” he said.
He asked what Tempelis and the Wisconsin DAs association hoped to gain from the committee.
Tempelis asked for a comprehensive study of what prosecutors’ workloads look like, followed by a measure that accurately reflects the size and scope of work in each jurisdiction and can evolve. She suggested that such an overhaul would necessitate a new entity to oversee the work, to “help us make smarter decisions than what we have happening now.”