Attorney General outlines budget requests, consumer recoveries and statewide pre-charge diversion funding to Appropriations

Attorney General Charity Clark briefed the House Appropriations Committee on Feb. 27 on the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) budget, recovery work and program requests, including funding for an appellate attorney, a consumer/big-tech attorney, a permanent home‑improvement specialist and resources to administer statewide pre-charge diversion.

“Everybody in the state house knows Willow, who is the Director of the Community Justice Unit and has been doing an amazing job for many years,” Clark said while introducing staff and describing the AGO’s request. Clark said the governor’s recommended AGO budget is about $17.1 million and that the office was asking for a small set of additional adjustments.

Clark told the committee the AGO has a staff of roughly 47 managed positions and works with embedded attorneys in other agencies. She highlighted recent enforcement work and recoveries, including multi-state consumer actions and litigation against fossil-fuel companies, PFAS/PCB-related defendants and manufacturers linked to harms the state seeks to remediate. Clark said the office had consumer recoveries, citing as an example a $3 million recovery in a case that the AGO helped conceive and lead.

On EB-5 litigation and immigration-related settlement work, Clark said the office is actively assisting a receiver and outside immigration counsel to facilitate green-card applications tied to the EB-5 settlement and that timing and total costs remain uncertain. On opioid litigation, Clark described ongoing work to finalize term sheets and said some payments could arrive within about a year, though she did not give a definitive timeline.

Clark outlined four staffing proposals the AGO brought to the committee: a base-funded appellate assistant attorney general to handle constitutional and appellate work; a consumer/big‑tech assistant attorney general to pursue high‑impact consumer-protection actions; funding to professionalize and staff the statewide pre‑charge diversion program; and converting a successful home‑improvement specialist position in the Consumer Assistance Program (CAP) from limited-service to permanent. She argued the consumer/big-tech position could produce recoveries that would offset its cost.

Willow (Willa) Farrell, director of the Community Justice Unit, spoke about the programmatic request for court diversion and pre‑charge diversion funding. She said last year’s increase allowed grantees to add 3.5 full‑time equivalents across programs and that the AGO’s request for grant funding to deliver pre‑charge diversion statewide is “just a little under $1,700,000.” Farrell described pre‑charge diversion as a fast, law-enforcement-initiated restorative option for low‑level, first‑time offenses that avoids prosecutor charging and can resolve matters quickly, connect participants to services, and reduce court demand. Farrell and AGO budget staff described grant oversight, quarterly reporting and an annual quality‑assurance schedule for local providers.

Committee members asked about: how the AGO’s requested positions relate to existing Senate or House adjustments; whether recovered settlement funds are predictable for budgeting; the timing and uncertainty around EB‑5 and opioid recoveries; and whether DOC’s reallocation of pre‑charge funds eliminated DOC funding for those services. Clark and budget staff said some recoveries are uncertain by timing and amount, that consumer settlement returns historically vary (the AGO cited a $2 million planning figure for recurring recoveries), and that DOC repurposed prior grant funding, leaving a gap the AGO seeks to fill to preserve statewide pre‑charge services.

Clark concluded by reiterating the AGO’s enforcement and consumer assistance work and by asking the committee to consider the office’s staffing requests and the pre‑charge grant funding as part of ongoing budget negotiations.