County Prosecutor's Office Works Through Staffing Shortages

According to George, when prosecutor Tim Rasmussen took office from Jerry Wetle in the mid 2000s, the office employed seven deputy prosecutors. This year, George was approved by the county commissioners to hire five employees, in addition to a current part-time employee. She said, “Previously, our budget has always approved seven deputy prosecutors. We might not have had the positions filled – as we can't get applicants – but we were approved to have them. This is the first year I wasn't approved to have them.” She said she has only been able to hire three deputies: a felony deputy, a district court deputy, and a deputy who works in child support enforcement and therapeutic courts. “To put that in perspective,” she said, “fully staffed, I have three felony deputies, two district court deputies, and then a full-time civil deputy. So I'm 50% staffed.”

Stevens County treasurer Leslie Valz said, “[George’s] situation is that the market for attorneys has increased. The starting wage of an attorney was somewhere similar to an entry level professional. But now that attorneys walk out of law school with close to a quarter million dollars in student loans, they have an expectation of starting close to $80,000 to $100,000 a year. Our wage range for the county has [been] somewhere around $60,000 to $70 ,000 a year for a new prosecuting attorney.”

Valz said that these competitive entry wages are necessary for applicants to even consider a job posting. “And I know a lot of industries in our area are in that same situation,” she said. “[If] they see a job in Spokane that pays some $40,000 more a year and they live in Spokane, they're going to obviously go with that job in Spokane. So we need to have something beyond the beautiful place that we live in to be able to attract folks from out of the area.” Valz added that George “doesn't have the option to recruit locally,” and that housing shortages in Stevens County further complicate hiring.

“I have to find an applicant who wants this lifestyle,” said George. “I do find applicants that want to live in rural communities. It's just really hard to recruit to Stevens County when people can make substantially more money in a bigger city.” Valz continued, “Because [George] has been in that position now for a number of years, she has repeatedly brought that up and has not received any level of response. Part of that is because her employees are unionized – so it's different than being able to individually negotiate with them about an amount, because the union sets the wage range for those folks.” 

According to Sheriff Brad Manke, competitive hiring rates are standard across the board, and the problem is “specific to us because our county … is not prioritizing funding correctly.” Manke added, “In the patrol division, I don’t have trouble hiring because [we offer] fairly competitive wages.”

George stated, “With the budget shortfall, [the county commissioners] are not willing to put up the money to be competitive.” Her office was already short two positions, so when staffing cuts were required, she simply could not make more hires. “And I will say the commissioners did work to raise the salaries of my deputy prosecutors. That was part of the reason I was short a position, because they had given some raises to my existing deputies. It's not a real issue right now, because I don't even have applicants.”

Valz said the only way to allow the prosecutor’s office more hiring positions would be for the commissioners to cut other services. However, she added, “The struggle that we've always been in in Stevens County is every single service that these offices are offering is required by law. The assessor is required by statute to assess property – even though he's got a large staff. You have to have the treasurer to take in the property taxes, because that's the only thing that keeps the budget going.” The commissioners would have to cut an office not required by law – such as the fairgrounds – but Valz said that these services have low expenses anyways. “At the same time, the fairgrounds bring some money. So you could do it, but then you'd probably actually lose more money than you would gain,” Valz said. 

George said that she is uncertain whether the Board of Commissioners will give her the budget authority she needs to be fully staffed next year. She said, “It helps out the county when I'm short-staffed, because I do save lots of money in salaries. I am a little bit frustrated, because I understand a budget shortfall, but my department has never increased in staffing at the attorney level. And yet the workload has continued to increase, as you can see by the workload of the sheriff's office.”

According to Valz, what the starting wage for new prosecuting attorneys is “still drastically under even what the sheriff's deputies [earn].” And, according to George, the auditor, clerk, and sheriff offices have increased their number of employees over the years, although the auditor has since returned to the same level of staffing. “It used to be that they would struggle because deputy prosecutors were some of the highest paid employees in the county because of their professional degrees,” she said. “But if you look at the salaries, law enforcement is making pretty much on par with what a deputy prosecutor is making. And I'll be frank: when I started, I was making less than a law enforcement officer was. And I have a four year degree, doctorate, and a master's of law.”

According to Valz, “The prosecutor's office is at about 50% of the staffing that they need, whereas the sheriff's office is at 90%. So it's a little more dire with the prosecutor's office than the sheriff's office. But there's only between $27 and $30 million that needs to be split amongst all of these offices.”

George continued, “You hear all the time about how many calls [the sheriff’s office] takes and all the increase in their world. The wages for law enforcement have gone up, and they have accommodated that without accommodating prosecutors.” She said that the commissioners’ efforts to support public safety staffing are often specific to the sheriff’s office, which often continues to fill vacancies during a hiring freeze. George said, “What seems to be left out [by] the commissioners is, in reality, our officers are on the front line. If I don't have attorneys to charge the cases, you can arrest all the people you want, but you don't have anyone to prosecute the crime. The law enforcement removes them in that immediate moment, but if I'm not charging them and convicting them of crimes, then the public isn't actually safe.”