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District attorney asks commissioners to add intake/paralegal staff to clear 200-case backlog
Summary
Kaufman County's district attorney (Judge Wiley) told commissioners the office is "200 cases down" in intake and asked the court to reclassify a receptionist as a paralegal and add another full-time intake paralegal to reduce backlog and speed prosecutions.
Judge Wiley, identified and introduced at the start of the workshop, urged the commissioners to approve reclassifying a receptionist position to a paralegal level and to add at least one full-time intake paralegal to address a backlog of case processing.
"We had lost somebody and so we were 1 down, we had gotten to where we were 200 cases down," Wiley said, describing how delayed intake slows prosecutions, stretches jail holds and increases overtime. Wiley said the office screens and accepts every filed case and that intake capacity has not kept pace with new filings and added specialty dockets.
Wiley described other staff needs if funding is available, including a juvenile prosecutor and potentially another paralegal, and noted that several grant-funded positions have helped absorb workloads in the past. Commissioners asked whether grants or reimbursements could cover positions; Wiley said some paralegal roles are grant-funded but cautioned that grants can end and any contract or third-party funding would need to be reviewed before the county relied on it.
The workshop is advisory; no hiring or budget approvals were made. The court reiterated it will balance requests against final revenue and may revisit specific positions in later budget sessions.
