Overview:
District Attorney Keith Higgins presented a staffing plan Tuesday to the county commission, which they must approve or deny by Feb 1.
The budgetary impasse impeding the operations of the five-county Brunswick Judicial Circuit district attorney’s office remains, but Glynn County commissioners have a new staffing adjustment plan to consider.
District Attorney Keith Higgins presented the plan Tuesday to the commission, which they must approve or deny by Feb 1.
The room was fraught with tension as the commissioners balked at giving out any more “taxpayer dollars” to Higgins and questioned how he’d address the budget deficit.
“You need taxpayers dollars to pay taxpayers back with their own money?,” District 5 commissioner Allen Booker questioned at the meeting.
Higgins rebutted with “If you want to be reimbursed. Yes, sir, that’s the way to do it.” Prosecutor offices in Georgia are funded by public funds from the state and counties served, along with occasional project grants.
Booker walked out before the meeting was adjourned. Chairman Walter Rafolski was not present.
“You want us to give you extra money a month so you can turn around and give it back and to meet the debt. I’m not a financial genius but I’m just not getting it’s not adding up,” said Bo Clark Commissioner At Large Post 1.
“Well, I’m not asking you to give me any money for me to meet the debt. What I’m telling you is what transpired that made it impossible for me to repay Glynn County,” said Higgins.
The staffing plan
The plan will make full use of the original budget appropriation of $1,300,977, and authorization from the county Higgins would be able to fill the positions of a receptionist for $53,633.50 and legal assistant for $55,906.50 for the remaining pay periods of the fiscal year. The plan also would allow him to hire a new fifth assistant district attorney for the last two pay periods in this fiscal year for $85,066 including salary and benefits. In addition, he would transfer another, existing prosecutor position – currently funded by the American Rescue Plan Act grant (ARPA) – to the county payroll. The cost for the position would amount to $145,742.73 including salary and benefits.
“[The plan] doesn’t ask you to spend another penny other than that you appropriated. Now I’m asking you to appropriate and allow us to use the full amount of the funds that you initially appropriated for fiscal year 25 that’s the amount of $1,300,977,” said Higgins at the meeting.
Since the budget shortfall was identified in February, the county has not disbursed full appropriations to the DA’s office. Instead, commissioners require Higgins to clearly show that staff members are working on Glynn County cases with the appropriation. The county was due to pay the office $108,414.75 each month.
“If we approve this staffing at this dollar amount. The only way that I see – and you may have – and you may have hit on this, to get reimbursed for the other funds is to increase the budget again for the coming fiscal year,” posited Wayne Neal, District 3 commissioner.
“That’s not what I said. I was asked specific questions about catching up. That’s separate and apart from this, this staffing plan that I’m trying to present within the current budget, even if you want to go by the reduced amount, and I submit, if you do, respectfully submit, if you do, you’re doing that, acting unlawfully at that point. But if you do that, so be it,” Higgins said. “You have the power to do so and if you do that, then even under Ms. Munson’s calculations, I still have enough funds to add the assistant district attorney two position immediately.”
The ARPA funds expire at the end of this month. If the county does not approve the plan, the ARPA-funded prosecutor will have to be moved into a state paid position that Higgins is looking to use to hire a prosecutor to serve Wayne County. As of now, the Chief Assistant DA handles all cases in Wayne County.
None of the four assistant district attorneys who work in the Glynn County office is funded by the county. One ADA is supplemented by the county. The state pays $64,365 for that position’s salary then the county adds $18,057 in total supplements. The other three ADAs are funded entirely by the state and the ARPA grant.
Aside from the immediate hires, to fully fund the Glynn County office Higgins also proposed an intergovernmental agreement with the county to pay $33,180 for three quarters of the year and $32,953 for Q4 to hire two victim advocates. The funds come from a 132,493 grant Higgins received from the state to pay salary and benefits of victim advocates.
“I will also be able to hire the investigator, the vacant investigator position, beginning on June one, for two pay periods, I can fill the staffing plan before the next fiscal year without you spending anything in excess of what you’ve already appropriated to the DA office for this fiscal year,” he said.
Delays in pay
Higgins also asked commissioners to allow the county’s finance office to directly pay checks to those who work in the Glynn County office. He asked Camden County to do the same back in September.
He said that this would remedy the delays in payroll that he has experienced since the county stopped acting as the payroll processor for the office back in September. The county has not paid the office for the last two pay periods in January, the last pay period was on Friday. Higgins said the office has had to use a different fund to pay employees. The DA’s office receives 5% of the total fines collected in county courts.
For the last few years, the DA’s office has accrued between $90,000 and $120,000 in 5% fees, according to Tamara Munson, the county’s chief financial officer. Higgins says that it is unsustainable to continue using the funds to pay employees because the collections arrive inconsistently.
Since Glynn County Finance stopped processing payroll for the DA’s office in September. Higgins has had to send in detailed invoices that outline the work of employees working in the Glynn County office. Invoices were not paid out to the DA’s office for the last two pay periods of this month.
“I have not received those [invoices]. I’m not sure who you sent those to but I have not received them. We will get you paid as we will try to get you a check within three to five days once we get those invoices,” said Munson.
Higgins owes the county $977,000 for FY 24 and around $132,000 for FY 25 since the county provided payroll for the office in July, August and September according to Munson. He will be submitting staffing plans to each of the other counties in the circuit.
Higgins said that the four ADAs in Glynn are prosecuting about 600 felony cases each. Neal said that the commissioners would not be voting on the proposal because they never do so at work sessions. He assured Higgins that they would try to expedite the process to get an answer to Higgins in the coming days.
“We are severely understaffed. We need to be able to staff our office as fully as we can under the current budget, within the budget, as quickly as we can, so that we can more effectively do our job for our citizens, and we can have a safer place in which to live, as comparison, with regard to how severely we’re understaffed,” he stated.