Budget crunches prosecutor staff

March 26, 2010 at 12:01a.m.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office will begin a floating-holiday policy to cut costs next week and continue it indefinitely due to the county’s financial crisis.

Prosecutor Paul J. Gains announced Thursday that each employee in his office will take 1 1/2 days off without pay in every two-week pay period, amounting to a 15-percent pay cut, and that he will make a comparable rebate to the county from his $112,000 annual salary.

The prosecutor’s office has about 45 employees, Gains said. The full-time assistant prosecutors earn between $42,000 and $80,000 and average about $58,000 a year. The average secretary makes between $31,000 and $32,000.

Gains said the new policy is designed to save the $560,000 that is likely to be cut from his budget this year. He said that cut amounts to about 20 percent of his 2009 budget, which was about $2.8 million. Seven positions in his office remain vacant as a result of his office’s financial concessions last year, he said.

“We are in a fiscal emergency. This is a severely deep recession in this area,” Gains said.

Gains had a news conference at the county jail to announce the new policy, which he detailed in a letter to Judge Maureen A. Sweeney, administrative judge of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

“This policy is due to lack of funding and the desire to minimize the effect on the movement of criminal cases through the courts,” Gains wrote, adding that the floating-holiday policy is preferable to laying off assistant prosecutors.

If the courthouse could be closed one day every two weeks, the prosecutor’s office would follow suit, Gains wrote.

“I think that would help everybody because it would free up some money that hopefully we can pump into the jail to at least maintain as many beds as possible,” Gains said at the news conference.

“Revenues have declined considerably in the last 18 months,” and are unlikely to increase in the foreseeable future to fully fund all county operations, including that of the jail, Gains told the judge.

Gains said his office would explore encouraging more defendants to agree to plead guilty to bills of information concerning lower level felony charges, rather than undergo a grand jury indictment.

This would expedite the movement of cases through the courts and free up pre-trial jail detention space for those charged with violent crimes who can’t post bond, he explained.

Gains’ news conference was at the county jail, where he said a settlement conference on the jail’s future was under way, but he declined to provide details.

City and county officials have been discussing ways to fund county jail operations, now that budget constraints caused the sheriff to propose the layoff of one-third of his deputies and the closing of half the jail.

The jail is under federal court supervision under a consent decree that settled an inmate lawsuit concerning jail crowding. That consent decree requires the jail to be fully open and staffed.

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster ordered the city and county to fax a joint status report on progress in discussions on the jail by noon today in advance of a mediation session Monday.