Our readers may have mixed feelings with the latest movement to defund police departments, but are you aware that we have already defunded another critical executive branch office in the MN government?
On June 3, 2020, Kirsten Swanson of KSTP referred to the assistance of AG Keith Ellison to the Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman with the prosecution of the four former police officers involved with George Floyd’s death as “an unprecedented move”.
This is ironic in that the AGO itself refers to this type of assistance as “state government services” and describes part of its mission is to “provide Minnesota counties and law enforcement agencies with assistance in serious criminal matters”.
What wasn’t highlighted – by either Swanson or her added commentary from former AG Lori Swanson – is that the AG’s office has been “gutted” over the last 20 years per a quote from retired judge Hon. Robert Small in a MN Star Tribune editorial on March 26, 2019.
The editorial goes on to say that the MN attorney general’s office “had a robust criminal division ready to assist county attorneys with their most difficult cases while also pursuing consumer cases with vigor and leading on national cases such as the landmark lawsuit against big tobacco”.
They claim the office staff “shrunk considerably” from 260 attorneys in 1999 to 130 at the time of the article last year.
A March 2019 AGO biennial budget report more than echoes the Star Tribune’s editorial.
Firstly, the AGO requested a budget increase JUST to maintain the staff it already has.
“The attorneys [from the top ten private law offices in Minnesota that our public attorneys litigate against] receive compensation equivalent to multiple times that of their Attorney General Office opponents. Often these firms are able to recruit staff attorneys away from the Attorney General’s Office by offering them significant pay increases. Public law offices cannot compete with the salaries paid lawyers in private law offices of similar size, but the Attorney General’s Office and other public law offices must be able to pay salaries that will enable them to recruit and retain attorneys capable of defending the interests of the state, its agencies and people in court.”
“Similarly, the Attorney General’s Office must be able to compete with other public law offices for the best attorneys who are interested in public service. But an analysis of the salaries paid by the U. S. Attorney’s Office, and Ramsey and Hennepin County Attorney Offices shows that the Attorney General salaries are a distant fourth. Comparisons with these federal and county law offices demonstrate that across the board Attorney General staff are paid less than their counterparts in those offices.”
Why?
“A number of factors may explain this disparity in pay but certainly the freeze on the general fund appropriation to the Attorney General’s Office is a significant one. For three successive biennia the general fund appropriation for the Attorney General’s Office has been $22,125,000… Without positive action on this request pay to Attorney General staff will fall further behind.”
Finally, in proposal.
“The Attorney General’s Office requests an increase for competitive salary increases for attorney staff. The requested funds will not eliminate or reduce the gap between salaries paid in these three comparable law offices, but they will help keep the gap from growing greater.”
Gov Tim Walz recommended “increase of $994,000 in FY 2020 and $1.311 million in FY 2021 and each year thereafter from the General Fund”. This is around a 5.2% increase to the AGO budget.
Let’s put those numbers into perspective.
If an average AGO attorney makes $96,102 annual salary, we would need to increase AGO budget by $12,493,260 just to reach pre-1999 lawyer numbers at low, non-competitive salaries. This number does NOT include additional support staff or administrative costs.
What is the impact of this?
“Since 1999, the AGO has decreased its capacity to assist county attorneys with criminal prosecutions.”
It’s no surprise then that a young reporter feels like the AGO being able to do their job to assist in the George Floyd case is “unprecedented”.
Are the rest of us aware of the following?
“At the present time, the Attorney General’s Office has only one full-time criminal prosecutor whose assistance is limited to homicide cases. Requests from county attorneys for assistance with prosecution of other violent crimes, white collar crime, financial exploitation, multi-county prosecutions of drug or human trafficking, or other complex or unusual cases are routinely not accepted for prosecution due to lack of staff.”
To be continued.
Sources:
https://www.startribune.com/state-ag-s-office-needs-reinforcements/507696132/?refresh=true
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