Weber County attorney’s office warns of staffing crisis as caseloads and complex violent cases climb

Weber County’s attorney team told commissioners on May 11 that the office is approaching what it called a staffing crisis as vacancies, unpaid overtime and a high share of complex felony cases strain capacity.

“Prosecutors are quitting because of low salaries, huge caseloads, and the immense stress of the job,” Chris Crocker said while opening the office update. Crocker and staff urged the commission to consider a combination of short-term and phased funding options to avoid long-term service gaps.

The presentation said the office has 19 prosecutors handling roughly 3,300 district-court filings last year — a per-prosecutor average the presenters placed near 173 cases — materially higher than averages cited for neighboring jurisdictions. Brandon Miles, who reviewed comparative data, told commissioners that peer offices such as Farmington report significantly lower per-attorney averages (the presentation cited roughly 111 for Farmington) and that Utah County’s per-attorney averages were near the low 120s in recent years.

That volume is compounded, staff said, by a higher share of resource-intensive group-A crimes. Crocker and Miles emphasized the local difference is not only the number of matters but the complexity: the office reported 26 active homicide cases plus one capital case. “These are cases that take weeks of trial preparation and trial time and pull attorneys out of normal rotations,” Crocker said, noting multiweek murder trials required night and weekend work by small lead teams.

Presenters described recruitment challenges: application pools for prosecutor positions have shrunk (the office said roles that once drew dozens of well-qualified applicants now receive only a handful), and many applicants lack felony trial experience. Miles said the office increasingly hires recent law-school graduates who need multi-year training before they can handle major felonies — a pipeline the office fears will break if turnover continues.

Pay and comparative salaries were a central concern. The presentation summarized internal salary surveys and a Baker Tilly pay-band comparison and estimated county compensation lags peer agencies by roughly $115–$120 on average for comparable experience levels. Crocker said that gap encourages attorneys to accept positions with the state or private sector that pay $5–$8 more per hour for equivalent duties.

To address the shortfall, the attorneys proposed a phased plan that would add four prosecutors and a support staff position and increase salaries toward market bands over several years. The package presented included an initial ballpark figure of about $1,000,003 to cover hires and salary adjustments in an early phase, with a proposal to taper one-time funds over five years while incrementally increasing the baseline budget.

As funding options, the office suggested using a mix of payroll savings, opioid-settlement dollars, a temporary public-safety sales tax (a so-called “fifth cent”), and seeking a short-term FTE funded by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Crocker emphasized a phased approach to avoid a funding cliff when one-time dollars are exhausted.

Commissioners asked staff to research statutory constraints on any sales-tax option and requested information from Davis County — which had used opioid funds for similar purposes — about its approach. The commission did not take a funding vote at the work session; staff said they would return with legal research and additional budget detail.

The office’s update closed with a request for continued commissioner input and for staff to explore the hybrid funding paths discussed. The attorneys said failing to act would put the county at risk of increasing backlogs and reduced capacity to prosecute serious cases.