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County sets salary for discovery facilitator after role evolves to manage digital evidence across local agencies
Summary
The committee approved setting the salary grade for a new discovery facilitator position to reflect expanded responsibilities managing and extracting digital evidence for prosecutions; the position represents a reclassification and is intended to formalize work already being performed.
The Chautauqua County Administrative Services Committee on April 14 approved a resolution to set the salary grade for a discovery facilitator position that the district attorney said reflects expanded duties managing digital evidence from local police agencies.
Jason Schmidt, the county district attorney, explained the position’s history and evolution. He said that earlier discovery reforms and delays related to the pandemic changed the anticipated duties for the county’s discovery staff. He described Benjamin Lucas (formerly with the sheriff’s office) as having developed technical expertise connecting to several police department servers and extracting and managing digital evidence, including body camera footage. “His role is quite different than what we initially had envisioned... he is actually inside police systems engaged in pulling out their digital evidence and then he manages it for us,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said the county worked with human resources to produce a new job description and classify the position as a discovery facilitator at grade 18 to match the technical responsibilities. He said the county also has discovery expediters in other offices who handle intake and review, and that this facilitator role is more technical and integrative across agencies. Schmidt said the reclassification will not require returning to the committee for a budget amendment because current vacancies mean the change can be absorbed in the existing personnel budget.
Committee members expressed support and recognized the position’s expanded scope, particularly given differing proprietary evidence-management systems across local police departments. The resolution passed by voice vote; the transcript does not record a roll-call tally or name a mover or seconder.
