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Elected officials in Sacramento County Tuesday redirected money away from a fund to pay for future road maintenance in order to increase the budget for the District Attorney’s Office.
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The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors amended its current budget to add nearly $3 million to the District Attorney’s Office, and also to give some money back to several other services in other departments. In order to do that, the supervisors redirected about $2.4 million for future road maintenance, and about $1.3 million in reserves.
The $3 million includes salaries for 10 DA’s Office employees, county spokesperson Kim Nava said. The board had previously eliminated 14 DA’s Office positions, Nava said. All the positions are vacant, meaning there will be no layoffs.
Supervisor Pat Hume, who made the motion, said funding misdemeanor prosecutor positions, four of which are included in the restored funding, “will not increase the likelihood of incarceration.”
The Sheriff’s Homeless Outreach Team and Problem-Oriented Policing teams, to which the board previously restored funding, last year arrested about 3,000 people, District Attorney Thien Ho told the board in asking for the funding. The misdemeanor team reviews many of those arrests to determine whether to file charges, Ho said.
“DUIs, theft, battery, vandalism, trespassing, and low level narcotics just to name few,” Ho told the board. “These are misdemeanor offenses on paper but in reality they have major consequences. The quality of life crimes destroy quality of life … I do remain hopeful the sun will rise again.”
Supervisor Pat Hume agreed.
“In my estimation the only tool we have to compel different behavior is justice involvement,” Hume said. “Nobody wants them to end up incarcerated, but that’s the thing to say, ‘we’ve documented a series of behavior and encourage you to behave differently.’”
Barbara Ramm of activist group Decarcerate Sacramento urged the board not to increase the DA’s Office budget, raising concerns to will lead to more homeless people in jail for misdemeanors like camping and trespassing. One-third of people booked into Sacramento County jails each month were identified as homeless in the past year. Many of those were in jail on suspicion of the misdemeanor charges Ho mentioned.
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The county’s $9 billion budget faced a structural deficit for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, due in part to federal cuts from the federal budget bill H.R. 1, which led to “substantial program reductions across many departments,” according to an Aug. 26 from County Executive David Villanueva.
Earlier this year, Villanueva asked all county department heads to propose their list of what they would cut within their departments.
The board voted unanimously to restore the nearly $3 million Tuesday, with Supervisor Patrick Kennedy voicing some criticism about how Ho handled the budget process.
“The cut to the misdemeanor program was brought on by the DA,” Kennedy said during the meeting. “It was a choice to be made. So for me to say we’re going to restore a program we don’t even have the capacity to cut, I think, is disingenuous.”
The board also Tuesday restored about $278,000 to the Public Defender’s Office, restored about $380,000 to the “Birth and Beyond” center, which offers parenting services to low-income families, and restored $150,000 for a youth transportation program.
“I want to express my sincere gratitude to Sacramento County Supervisors Rich Desmond, Pat Hume, Chairwoman Rosario Rodriguez, and Phil Serna for their thoughtful deliberation and vote to restore significant and much needed funding to the District Attorney’s budget, allowing us to ensure public safety,” Ho said in a statement after the vote.
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