Macomb Co. approves $1.1B budget, including more staff for prosecutor’s office
Macomb County has approved a $1.1 billion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which includes funding to expand the size of the prosecutor’s office but not as much as Prosecutor Peter Lucido had requested.
Under the county’s new budget approved Monday by the Macomb County Board of Commissioners, four new attorney and two investigator positions have been added to the prosecutor’s office covered by grant funds. They include positions in the conviction integrity unit, hate crimes unit and auto theft unit. One other attorney position will be funded by county money and will be part of the appellate division, which is seeing a high caseload currently, Lucido said.
The additions come after Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel originally didn’t include any added new positions to Lucido’s office in his recommended budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts Jan. 1.
But during the budget review process, Lucido’s office asked the county commission to amend the budget to add several attorneys and four office assistants and to promote one employee.
In a committee meeting on Nov. 20, the commission voted to add all of those positions to the budget, except for two attorneys. The board then passed the budget ― a total of $1.1 billion ― on Monday.
“We’re trying to stay within the county executive’s budget number — which the board supports ― and we didn’t want to be crossing that line,” Commission chair Don Brown said, referring to the $1.1 billion budget total.
The two attorney positions that weren’t approved were an assistant prosecuting attorney for district courts and another for specialty courts, which include drug court, veterans court and other similar courts.
Hackel, for his part, has hinted he could do line-item vetoes to the approved budget. He and Lucido have clashed in the past about staffing for the prosecutor’s office, a fight that wound up in court.
What the approved positions were
Lucido’s office asked the county commission to include six grant-funded positions in the budget. They include one attorney in the hate crimes unit, one attorney in the auto theft unit, and two attorneys and two investigators in the conviction integrity unit, Lucido said. Conviction integrity units work to identify and remedy wrongful convictions, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
These grant-funded positions won’t rely on the county’s general fund.
“We’re very proud of those grants,” Lucido said, “because it doesn’t cost the taxpayers of Macomb County, as it is spread out with all the taxpayers across the United States.”
The prosecutor’s office also asked for several non-grant funded positions, including four, part-time office assistants and one appellate attorney. These office assistant positions were created two years ago, Lucido said, and the board decided to continue funding them, even though Hackel didn’t include them in his recommended budget.
Lucido said the assistants are necessary because the office has to download a large amount of digital evidence ― things such as body camera footage and cellphone data.
Another appellate attorney is needed because the number of appeals has increased in recent years, Lucido said.
Lucido also requested that his employee, Kumar Palepu, be promoted from the title of principal trial lawyer to the title of chief of district courts. Lucido said Palepu has been running the district courts, so he “was working out of class.”
Why the commissioners voted the way they did
In the Nov. 20 committee meeting, the board denied, in a 5-6 vote, an amendment for funding for two assistant prosecuting attorney positions.
Brown, chairman of the county commission, said other county departments asked for additional personnel in fiscal year 2024, but they were told to hold off until “better times.”
“So we drew the line on those two positions,” Brown said of the two attorney positions.
County Commissioner Sarah Lucido also was among those who didn’t vote for the two roles. She said the county didn’t “have the money in the budget per se” to cover all of the positions that the prosecutor was requesting.
All county commissioners present at the committee meeting voted in favor of the grant-funded positions.
“We welcome dollars from the state or federal government, because that helps us do our services for the residents at no cost ― at no additional cost,” County Commissioner Mai Xiong said.
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‘Do more with what you have’
Lucido wants to dedicate an attorney to specialty court instead of making prosecutors who are dealing with other matters go to specialty court as well. These courts help people living with addiction, among other issues, and Lucido said they do “a great job.”
Hackel, the county executive, said in early October that he would rather compensate his employees more than add additional employees to his workforce. His recommended budget included new full-time employees, but he said that all of those were at least partially funded by grants or other funding sources than the general fund.
Hackel said on Tuesday he didn’t support adding non-grant funded positions to the prosecutor’s office.
“I think we as public officials need to make a distinction between what’s a want versus what’s a need, when we’re talking about requesting money to support the service that we provide,” he said.
Hackel said that all other countywide elected officials and department heads were onboard with the mindset of thinking about future years.
“They all agreed that the time right now is to do more with less, or do more with what you have,” he said. “And I think everyone else understands that, with the exception of the prosecutor.”
Hackel will now be reviewing the budget and can, if he wishes, eliminate specific parts of it through line-item vetoes. But the commission can override those vetoes.
Hackel said there is “a likelihood that there’s certain areas, specifically with the positions the prosecutor had gotten, that we will veto, knowing that they’ll probably be overridden.”
asnabes@detroitnews.com
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