Farrell: “… a recipe for disaster”
MONTICELLO – Sullivan County’s staff of Assistant District Attorneys is overworked and underpaid, according to DA James Farrell, who appealed to county legislators for help. He will likely get some.
“We are below 1997 staffing levels,” Farrell said. “We are seriously understaffed.”
“Increased workloads, overworked prosecutors, is a recipe for disaster and threatens our mission and a threat to public safety” the DA said. The consequences, he said, could be more mistakes, and burnout. To avoid that, he said he needs an experienced staff of prosecutors.
Farrell said he needs a staff of ten or eleven, including four felony prosecutors and six misdemeanor prosecutors. He is currently at six.
He noted he did not fill four ADA positions for two years, saving the county $190,000.
Salaries budgeted in 2010 were about $608,000. In 2017, the DA proposed a total salary request of $630,000. Farrell said that is well below the rate of inflation.
The Public Safety and Law Enforcement Committee agreed to Farrell’s request to fill three ADA positions and to increase salaries by a total of just under $53,000. The full legislature will consider the request at its monthly meeting on August 17.
