Lynchburg City Council approves money for Commonwealth's Attorney's office

City Council voted Tuesday to direct more than $66,000 to the commonwealth’s attorney’s office, staving off potential cuts to that office’s budget.

State and federal funding cuts had Lynchburg’s chief prosecutor considering the loss of nearly a third of his attorneys.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Doucette said the cuts had left him pondering options including no longer prosecuting misdemeanors in district courts and targeted reductions in domestic violence prosecution.

Doucette made his case to City Council Tuesday evening, looking for $66,755 needed to help with a $74,263 loss in state funding through the end of the fiscal year in June.

Council voted unanimously to direct the city staff to give him the money. Members expressed displeasure over having to step in for the state, but said the services were too valuable to sacrifice.

“It’s appalling that the state would require us to do something but not fund it,” councilman Mike Gillette said. “It’s unforgivable that they would let this fall on us, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need what you do.”

The council budgeted $500,000 to help absorb anticipated state funding cuts. In a memo to council before Tuesday’s meeting, of the more than $1.5 million in anticipated Lynchburg funding cuts, City Manager Kimball Payne highlighted cuts to the prosecutor and the clerk of the circuit court as two items that needed to be addressed quickly.

Council also voted Tuesday to direct $47,209 to the Clerk of the Circuit Court’s office.

Without the help from council Doucette said he might have resorted to what he called his “nuclear option.” City prosecutors would have no longer prosecuted misdemeanors outside of circuit court, where they rarely originate.

“If I lose three attorneys, I’ll go from 11 attorneys down to eight,” he said. “We will need those folks concentrating on felonies in circuit court. The remaining attorneys, their felony case load will skyrocket.”

No one is obligated by state law to prosecute the misdemeanors outside of circuit court, he said. That leaves police officers and judges in a bad situation, he said.

But even with the city’s help, which should be finalized next month, the bulk of the loss comes from a discontinued $200,000-a-year federal grant used to pay two attorneys and an investigator. The office has relied on the grant for more than a decade, Doucette said.

He has enough funding to pay the investigator through the end of the fiscal year. Funding for the two lawyers would end in December.

The office has applied for a lesser grant that would allow him to continue to pay the two lawyers until the end of June. Without that grant the office would either have to reduce the overall quality of prosecutions or target specific cases while neglecting others, he said.

Doucette said he is not using scare tactics to secure funding. The cuts would not necessarily have to come entirely out of lawyer salaries, he said. The reductions could also come from support staff.

The office employs 24 people with an annual payroll of $1.26 million. According to the city manager’s office, Doucette’s office gets a total of nearly $1.9 million annually from state, federal and local sources.

Staff writer Alicia Petska contributed to this report.