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Trenton,
NJ – Governor Chris Christie today
accepted the final report of the County
Prosecutor Study Commission, which he established
in July by Executive Order 33, to examine
the feasibility of modifying the State’s
county prosecutor’s office system
to achieve greater efficiency and savings
for taxpayers. Governor Christie will review
the Commission’s recommendations,
which include proposals to consolidate certain
prosecutorial functions, make budgeting
for the prosecutors’ offices more
objective and transparent, and address funding
disparities among the counties.
“My
charge to Attorney General Dow and the Study
Commission was to recommend ways to achieve
savings for taxpayers through efficiencies,
while ensuring public safety by maintaining
the highest professional standards for our
county prosecutor offices,” Governor
Christie said. “The Commission members
have met that charge with a number of strong
recommendations to more effectively evaluate
county Prosecutor offices operations, streamline
procedures and provide state guidance where
it is lacking. I commend them for their
thoroughness and thoughtfulness and I look
forward to reviewing this report further.”
The
Study Commission report, which represents
the consensus of a majority of the members,
concludes that a takeover of the County
Prosecutors’ Offices would cost the
State approximately $435 million. The Study
Commission report indicates that such a
takeover would not produce significant overall
cost savings and could “unwittingly
undermine the quality and effectiveness
of prosecution services.”
“While
the Commission concluded that a State takeover
of the Prosecutors’ Offices would
not ultimately generate savings for taxpayers
or improve performance, it recommended ways
in which the offices could be assisted and
made more cost efficient through consolidation
of functions, improved budgeting, and allocation
of forfeiture funds and new monetary penalties
against criminals,” Attorney General
Dow said. “I look forward to working
cooperatively with the counties to implement
changes as necessary and appropriate.”
The
findings provided by the Commission Study
Report cover five broad areas:
- Evaluation
of Current Organizational Structure of
New Jersey’s Prosecution System
- Improving
the Budgetary Process
- Addressing
Fiscal Problems by Means of an Objective
System for Providing State Financial Assistance
and by Establishing New Sources of Revenue
to Defray the Costs of Prosecution Services
-
Cost Savings by Reducing Redundancies
and Inefficiencies Through Consolidation
and Shared Services
- Clarifying
the Authority of County Governing Bodies
Among
the recommended actions for the Attorney
General to undertake, in cooperation with
the county prosecutors and county executives
and administrators:
- Develop
a formula or other objective methodology
to determine the appropriate staffing
levels of a county prosecutor’s
office, accounting for all relevant local
variables, including crime rates, arrests,
cases filed, and numbers of pleas and
trials. This should be used to standardize
the process by which county officials
determine the prosecutor’s budget,
and to make that process more objective
and transparent.
- Establish
an aid grant program, funded in part with
new penalties against convicted criminals,
to provide financial aid to eligible county
prosecutors’ offices based on a
formula that accounts for financial need
and objective performance measures.
- Consider
feasibility of amending State law to provide
that a percentage of assets forfeited
by criminals would be re-directed to the
State aid grant program for distribution
to eligible counties to address funding
disparities in prosecutors’ offices.
- Assign
more direct appeals to the Division of
Criminal Justice Appellate Bureau and
correspondingly reduce the number of appeals
that must be referred to the county prosecutors’
offices, relieving workload burdens recently
shifted by the State to the county prosecutors,
enhancing the consistency of appellate
advocacy in criminal matters, and increasing
Appellate Bureau staff to 2006 level.
- Study
the feasibility of closing underutilized
police academies and establishing a system
of regional academies.
- Take
steps to ensure the prompt implementation
of the federal Sex Offender Registration
and Notification Act (SORNA) to ensure
that the State does not forfeit federal
grant monies and to conserve county prosecutor
resources by simplifying the system for
“tiering” convicted sex offenders
and notifying the public.
- Issue
an Attorney General directive establishing
specific procedures and criteria regarding
when a prosecutor will be permitted to
ask the assignment judge in the county
to order the county freeholders to increase
the prosecutor's budget to enable the
prosecutor to fulfill his or her law enforcement
obligations. The Study Commission recommended
that such lawsuits – which are known
as “Bigley applications” and
which must be approved by the Attorney
General – be approved only if the
county has failed to allocate an appropriate
portion of its overall budget to the prosecutor’s
office or if there are compelling circumstances
related to public safety.
Attorney
General Dow chaired the Study Commission,
which was comprised of Treasurer Andrew
Sidamon-Eristoff; Essex County Executive
Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr.; Morris County
Administrator John Bonanni; Atlantic County
Executive Dennis Levinson; Hudson County
Executive Thomas A. DeGise; Mercer County
Executive Brian M. Hughes; Burlington County
Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi; Union County
Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow; Passaic
County Prosecutor Camelia M. Valdes; Stephen
J. Taylor, Director, Division of Criminal
Justice; Patrick E. Hobbs, Dean, Seton Hall
University School of Law; and former Attorney
General W. Cary Edwards.
The
Study Commission dedicated the report to
the memory of Commission member W. Cary
Edwards, former New Jersey Attorney General,
who passed away during the process.
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