PROSECUTORS SAY BUDGET CUTS WOULD CREATE CASE BACKLOG

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, speaking on behalf of the
city's five district attorneys and a special narcotics prosecutor, told the
City Council yesterday that the Bloomberg administration's proposed budget
cuts would force prosecutors to "significantly reduce" the number of
lawyers in their offices.

He said such a move could leave prosecutors unable to handle all of the
cases referred to them.

Testifying before the City Council's Public Safety Committee, Mr.
Morgenthau, who has been the Manhattan district attorney since 1975 and is
the dean of New York's prosecutors, suggested that the proposed cuts were
shortsighted, saying that effective law enforcement had contributed greatly
to the city's economic renaissance over the last decade.

Flanked by his fellow district attorneys and the narcotics prosecutor, Mr.
Morgenthau said that arrests made by the police are not meaningful unless
they are followed by prosecutions and, if appropriate, a jail or prison
sentence.

"We have to have the resources to follow up on those arrests," he said,
adding that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposed cuts could lead to
"revolving door justice."

"If the police make arrests and there's nobody available to prosecute those
cases, people will be back out on the street," he said. Allowing suspects
to quickly regain their freedom, he said, would waste police resources and
disillusion the law- abiding community .

Mr. Morgenthau's fellow prosecutors, who answered questions from the
members of the public safety committee, said they had decided that the
Manhattan district attorney should make a joint statement on their behalf
because of what they felt was the gravity of the issue.

Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, compared the criminal
justice system to a funnel, with arrests coming in at the wide end before
filtering down toward prosecution.

He said that because budget cuts to the Police Department are not expected
to significantly reduce the number of arrests, any cut to the prosecutors
budgets that would reduce staffing would create a logjam and increase the
amount of time between arrests and arraignments, taking police officers off
patrol for longer periods of time to process arrests.

The prosecutors each argued that because their budgets are relatively
small, the proposed cut would hit them much harder than larger agencies,
like the Police Department, which has a $3.3 billion budget.

William L. Murphy, the Staten Island district attorney, who has a 6.2
million budget, the smallest of the six prosecutors, is facing a cut under
Bloomberg's proposal of $427,000. He said federal funding that his office
had previously used to supplement city funding has dried up after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. "The federal trough has basically been closed," Mr.
Murphy said.

Brigit G. Brennan, a special narcotics prosecutor, who has a $14 million
budget and is facing a $1 million reduction, said she was concerned that
the cuts would affect the ability of her office to conduct long-term
investigations.

Mr. Morgenthau's budget, at $68 million, is the largest of the city's five
district attorneys', and he faces a $4.8 million cut. Brooklyn District
Attorney Charles J. Hynes, with a $67.7 million budget, is facing a $4.7
million reduction. The Bronx district attorney's office has a $40 million
budget and is facing a $2.8 million cut and Mr. Brown's office in Queens
has a $35 million budget and is facing a $2.6 million cut.

Edward Skyler, Mayor Bloomberg's press secretary, defended the cuts. "New
York City is in the midst of a fiscal crisis," he said. "Our uniformed
public safety agencies are sharing in the sacrifice and the district
attorneys must as well."

Peter F. Vallone, the Democrat from Queens who heads the Public Safety
Committee, said after the hearing that he accepted the prosecutors'
contention that they would be unable to properly perform their duties with
the proposed reductions.

"I don't believe their budget should be cut any further," he said.