CUTS FEARED AS CRIME FUNDS SLASHED

Prosecutors Predict Fewer Staff, Programs

Statewide programs for anti-drug task forces and
crime victim/witness services are in line for drastic cuts, and the
Milwaukee County district attorney's office might have to eliminate
jobs if federal law enforcement funding cuts approved by President
Bush hold up, Wisconsin prosecutors say.

"It is a dramatic issue for 2009," District Attorney John T. Chisholm
said Friday.

"It's not a matter of calling it the sky falling. . . . The money's
just not going to be there for any number of programs, including
community prosecution (and) drug prosecution."

Chisholm and a spokesman for state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen
both said significant rollbacks for state law-enforcement efforts are
likely if a two-thirds cut in a key federal grant program isn't reversed.

In the federal appropriations bill signed in December, the nationwide
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program's fiscal-year
2008 funding was cut from $520 million to $170 million - and in
Wisconsin, the two-thirds cut would affect federally funded programs
statewide and a group of prosecuting jobs in the Milwaukee district
attorney's office that the grants fund directly.

"If you experience a 10 to 15 percent cut in your staff," Chisholm
said, "which cases is that going to affect, and whose case is not
going to get the kind of attention that it needs?"

Chisholm said he needs further analysis to say exactly how many
prosecutors' and staffers' jobs could have their funding at risk
because of the grant cut, adding that he is "reluctant to use the
layoff word" although the subject has come up.

"In the end, if there's no funding, then the positions are not going
to be there," Chisholm said, "and that would result in a reduction of
staffing levels."

The news of the impending federal funding cuts comes after a summer
finding by Wisconsin's Legislative Audit Bureau that the state has
117 fewer prosecutors than it needs because of a lack of state funding.

In Milwaukee, the federal grants and other earmarked funds facing
scrutiny pay for prosecutors involved with Chisholm's community
prosecutor program, drug-enforcement efforts and domestic violence prevention.

Statewide, the attorney general's office uses a cut of the federal
funding to reimburse counties for some expenditures on anti-drug
measures and victim/witness services.

Van Hollen spokesman Kevin St. John called the grant cuts, if they
stand, "very disappointing" for what they will do to counties already
making do with fewer prosecutors than the audit found necessary.

"That's just going to further exacerbate conditions," St. John said
of the funding decrease.