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DA urges permanent funding for ARPA positions and more homicide staff to clear old cases
Summary
The District Attorney highlighted reliance on ARPA positions to process digital evidence and 9-1-1 backlogs and requested making 29 ARPA-funded roles permanent — including homicide prosecutors, paralegals, IT programmers and digital-forensics staff — to sustain reductions in violent-case backlogs.
Teresa Coronado, finance director for the District Attorney's Office, thanked the court for prior funding and highlighted the office's continued reliance on ARPA positions to process digital evidence (9-1-1, body-worn camera footage) and to staff new courts. She said the DA has 97 ARPA positions, and the office is prioritizing 29 to become permanent: chief homicide prosecutors and paralegals, misdemeanor administrative assistants (to manage digital evidence inflows), two digital-forensics positions for phone dumps and three IT programmers to build and maintain interfaces with police agencies.
DA staff noted that ARPA temps substantially reduced a 12,000-piece HPD 9-1-1 backlog down to 44 at one point, and that continued staffing is key to sustaining that progress. The DA also highlighted victim-service impacts (17,000 victims served last year) and warned that reductions in VOCA and other grant support will require county funding to maintain those services. Commissioners asked about intake coverage, specialty dockets and the long-term plan for converting temporary ARPA roles into recurring funding; the DA said the homicide team and digital-evidence staff have materially reduced resets and old-case delays and recommended permanence for prioritized positions.
