State's Attorney's office urges funding to protect victim advocates, pay for expert witnesses and curb transport overtime

A representative of the State's Attorney's office told the Senate Judiciary on April 9 that the department's top budget priority is eliminating the Governor's vacancy-savings targets so the office can avoid staff reductions and keep services running.

The representative said the office estimates roughly $620,000 tied to the vacancy-savings targets across three categories — State's Attorneys (about $331,000), victim advocates (about $148,000) and sheriffs (about $140,000) — and asked the committee to reject reductions that would force the department to leave funded positions open. "We have very few vacancies in our department," the speaker said, adding that in Windham County the office had to hold open a victim-advocate slot to meet this year's target.

The office identified two acute operating shortfalls. First, it requested an additional $50,000 for the expert-witness fund to cover mental-health experts frequently needed in homicide and competency cases: "we play a very dangerous game with our expert witness budget," the representative said. Second, the office warned that transport-program overtime and related line items are likely to be exceeded this fiscal year as in-person court activity increases, and it described both overtime and insufficient transport staffing as drivers of rising costs.

Committee members pressed the office on whether hiring more state-paid transport deputies would be cheaper than relying on overtime. The department said adding deputies carries start-up costs — vehicles, insurance and training — and that not all counties have state transport deputies. Warren Clevins, director of operations, cautioned that bringing an additional county deputy in does not automatically eliminate overtime for a given full-day transport because "there's still two deputies required for a full day."

The representative described other operational detail: the department said there are 26 authorized victim-advocate positions statewide (25 in place and about 23 filled at the time of the hearing), roughly 198 departmental positions in total, and 25 state-paid transport deputies (22 filled). The office referred to a $50-per-hour per-diem rate that some counties charge for county deputies performing state transports.

Senator Balint asked whether modest increases spread across priorities would be better than prioritizing a single area; the office said smaller additions across victim advocates, legal assistants and transport capacity could be helpful. The representative also said that clearing backlog low-level cases frees capacity for violent cases, noting the office moved roughly 5,000 cases over three years but that the clearance rate has slowed in the last year.

The department offered to provide one-page summaries and further data to appropriations and said it was rolling out training and administrative changes with the courts to reduce detainee overscheduling. The committee recessed for a short break after the presentation; no vote or formal committee action was taken during the hearing.