90 attorneys and 80 support staff. it is a daunting job. the public defender's office was developed because of the economy of scale. we realized through our work and our caseloads. coming here today, we worked with our controller for 2.5 months at the request of a budget director. we developed a caseload analysis that determined a

staffing level. it is based on felony and misdemeanor case loads that were appropriate a few years ago. we had an aberration. we had many cases dismissed as a result of the crime lab's scandal last year. later that same year, it was revealed that there were a number of police officers that had a criminal histories that have not been revealed that also required at our department to begin a review of cases.

all in all, we reviewed about 2000 cases. we certainly had some cases dismissed. there are hundreds of cases, having to review those cases, contact clients, bring them back to work, read some of -- writs of habeus corpus. the there were a number of police officers that were involved in misconduct.

they will be responsible for doing the review in these cases to the extent that we can get through these cases and put this behind us, it would be the best thing for the criminal justice system and the best thing for the city and the clients.

the third thing that i wanted to -- the second thing i wanted to raise to you today, we have reduced in number of cases, the referred to the private bar. there is a legal reason why a case cannot be handled by our office. it operates a panel of attorneys. they're available to accept appointments. because of lack of funding last year, our office was asked to handle all cases in which there was a conflict of interest.

we have a chart here. this one chart. and what you see, at the height of 2009, we were declaring 401 cases to the private bar. and in june of 2010, that was when we began seeing the reduction of cases. what you see is a steady reduction of cases referred to the private bar up until may 11. what this means is that you will

see the resulting reduction in costs to private representation provided to the bar association. that is a goal that we sent out to the chief, and we are still working to achieve that. we can see the dramatic drop of cases referred to the private bar. this year will be a watershed year for the criminal justice system. as you know, the governor has signed the realignment legislation. however, our office as well as the criminal justice partners are very much ahead of the curve. mir supervisorskarimi -- as supervisor mirkarimi can attest

to. so many individuals from state prisons and county jails, it will be critical that we not only properly staffed but properly train in order to accommodate a larger population both in the jails and in the communities. i would like to address the budget analyst's recommendations one by one. with respect to the disapproval or deletion of a new legal assistant to support the policy director, we are in agreement with that. that is a position that is currently grant funded. we received a grant from the san francisco foundation to support

that i was asked if it would be inappropriate to have that position in the probation department. the director will be overseeing the process, i agreed to have this position deleted from our budget. in respect to the temporary position, i believe that we have agreed to split the difference, so to speak. his math is, i'm sure, better than mine. we are in agreement in terms of reducing professional services

by $25,000. >> thank you very much. >> madam chair, members of the committee, going to page 49 that the public defender was just referring to, we were just advised by the mayor's office that there will be a technical amendment on that first position for the legal assistant position. we are withdrawing that recommendation. it is being transferred to another department and we believe it is supportable. there is no recommendation there. he is correct, i have agreed to recommend instead of $23,504 for the temporary miscellaneous salaries, i am recommending a

racket that -- a reduction of $11,000 are so. the total recommendations that would include the $25,000 and the $11,000 is $36,000 $762. -- $36,762. our total recommended general fund reductions are $179,000. i would be happy to respond to any questions. >> the recommendation is to withdraw the first item because it will be a technical adjustment. on the temporary miscellaneous about you. -- value. >> it would be for your consideration.

supervisor mirkarimi? >> afternoon, mr. public defender. the state's prisoner realignment, watershed is a good characterization. is if anticipating some of the realignment? >> the legislation was not funded, as you know. until sacramental decides what they are going to do with the funding, it is not clear what finding they will be for the various criminal justice programs. there is no funding set aside for either the district attorney for the public defender representation. that is a problem. i don't know who drafted the

legislation, but the details left that out. even though there are huge responsibilities pursuant to realignment including representing parole or probation revokcations. there are literally over 100 changes in statutory law that are affected by realignment. we are in a process now of putting together a proposal with the probation department that will outline all of the needs of the various departments. that plan will be forthcoming. sacramento needs to pass a budget and to move forward with some level of funding. >> thank you. appreciate it.

>> thank you, supervisor mirkarimi. if i could request the controller's office, you put together an issue on cases. can we forward that information to the committee members said that we have that point of reference? -- so that we have that point of reference? >> we did it last summer. it reflects the required fiscal year. >> i want to thank the defender coming with the budget analyst. thank you for one more. >> he agreed to give up his pension in the next three years. >> the performance section updated those figures on the case loads so we can provide you up-to-date information. >> it just so it is clear, those numbers appeared just a month

ago. these are current numbers. >> i had a quick question. how many are attorneys? >> 90. >> ok. if we're in agreement, we will take those analyst recommendations with those changes that were articulated. we won't be seeing you next week. ok, our next department is the district attorney. the district attorney is here. >> good afternoon, madam chair and board members. i want to start while we are loading up the power point, i would like to thank everyone who

helped me work on this budget. i want to take you very quickly through the review of what our workload is and the historical perspective for funding our department as well as other agencies not only in the county but in comparison with other counties. then i will get into the workload analysis. this was put together as an analysis of funding for various public safety agencies in the city and county of san francisco with a comparison of two other counties in a larger part of the state. the district attorney's office, if you look at this assessment from 1996 through 2008, it has the lowest proportion of inquiries. when you move to the next slide,

this is adjusted for inflation. if you look at this particular table here, i'm looking at san francisco. you will notice our agency, adjusted for inflation has less resources today in terms of dollars and sense than it did in 1986. most of us would agree that the world as much more complex than id was in 1986. next, there is a 10-year analysis of fte or staffing starting in the year of 2001 and taking it all the way through 2011-2012. you can see our staffing levels today are the lowest they have been in decades. numbers in the red bars are those suggested by the mayor's office. if we follow the numbers suggested by the budget analyst, we would go down to 238 as

opposed to 240. that's from a height of to hundred 70 to 10 years ago. next is a table that shows a workload by the various parties that work in the criminal justice system. this comes from the board management system. you can see the number of appearances each of the various entities makes, the district attorney, the public defender, a public bar and the defense. you can tell the district attorney by far has the largest workload. part of the reason is we have to appear in every case and we do not have the benefit of other parties appearing on our behalf. you can see our workload is considerably larger.

here are some of the other areas we are working on. these are issues we have to deal with and one of them is a homicide backlog. if you look at our homicide backlog, 50% of our cases are two years or older. this is a question of justice delayed is justice denied. i'm stealing hear from our public defenders work, but i agree with him. the cases do not get better with time. when we have homicide cases that are 4 years old or older, it creates a tremendous problem not only for the district attorney but for the public defense as well. it is a question of justice. this is an area we are trying to address.

it costs approximately $50,000 to keep someone in our county jail. this is an area we would like to move a foreword and try to reduce that number. the current staffing levels here, you will have cases aging and it will impact successful prosecutions. you heard our public defender talk about this -- this is a whole issue of compliance and dealing with the cases that may have had some irregularities. this is an area where we reviewed 4800 cases and responded to 425 motions. one single case took one

attorney a year to get the most work -- on not going to read this, you can see it. looking at fiscal year 2011- 2012, we are looking at 53 defense inquiries and the workload continues. we are looking at 350 files concerning the latest hotel cases as well as cases that are as old as two decades ago. some of the things we said for ourselves -- as we try to look at our budgeting process and how we handle our office, how do we handle becoming more effective with the way we handle our prosecutions? one goal is to reduce low-level crimes and do so in a way that actually improves our efficiency. we have created neighborhood

courts. this is an initiative designed to create greater community involvement to take out of our court room. we have criminalize many of those cases and create bed space for the court system to be able to handle the case in a more appropriate manner. we are assigning neighborhood prosecutors to the station. we have volunteer arbitrators trained to hear cases. that is as a result of this work -- there is no line -- providing services for offenders when appropriate. if you look at our five-year outlook, pressures will be coming from the passage of ab109. a lot of work traditionally done

at the state level will come to the local level. the good news is we have been working as a county. all the partners have been working for quite some time dealing with reentry issues. nevertheless, there is work coming our way and it has to do primarily with the parole in cases that do not involve violence. it looks like they will still come up to our local courts and yet to the district attorney's office. that is a workload that is not anticipated and we do not believe understand what the impact will be. obviously, our current budget does not entertain the impact the realignment may have on our criminal justice system at the local level. continuing to look at the five- year outlook -- we are trying to take cases away from our traditional courts into our neighborhood corp. program. we estimate taking this case to

our neighborhood courts will cost about $300 to $400 a case as opposed to $1,500 for the traditional process. we are completing a department wide assessment to find a way to find a department to work more efficiently without additional resources. we are also looking to pursue additional funding from other sources. we continue to formalize and expand our volunteer program and order to make up for the deficiencies we currently have. i would like to move over to the budget analyst recommendations. we mostly agree, however, we have a couple of disagreements here. first, starting with the request for a position for neighboring courts. we believe this is an initiative that should be funded. we believe is an investment in the future development of our criminal justice system and we would like to have that funded.

also, concerning the integrity and brady compliance, we agree with the budget analysts and we will restrict ourselves to his recommendations. however, we would like to see that particular reduction be reflected as step one. it is currently reflected a step 16. this is a step one decision. the third area has to do with our grant process for community courts. this is a $75,000 that would go to a community-based organization to support labor accords. we would like to see that continue to be funded. -- support neighborhood courts. the funding coming as a result of a 10-year-old lawsuit that we anticipate now may be funded this year from the state is $1

million and we agree of that money comes in should be accorded to the general fund. supervisor chu: thank you very much. supervisor wiener: in terms of the neighborhood court, i just one -- to my colleagues and a budget analyst, just to stress how important a program this is. i'm just making the point i want to make sure with respect to the neighborhood courts, the pilot or first station where this is being piloted his mission state -- mission station that covers a significant portion of my district. supervisor campos and i are extremely supportive of this

program and or with the district attorney when it was kicked off. one of the problems we have in my district is a lot of so- called quality of life crimes where there are not significant enough to warrant a big investment in terms of going through the criminal justice system, so we have a choice of either spending a lot of time and money going through the hall of justice or just dropping them. it is a huge restoration to my constituents where these kinds of lower-level crimes, people are not held accountable in any way for them. it is one of the greatest frustrations for a lot of my constituents. the neighborhood courts are a terrific and creative way to address that. i'm very supportive of that and i just wanted to put that out there and give that context. one other thing -- i guess we have come to agreement on the

brady issues. when i was in the city attorney's office and would work with the da's office on habeas issues, that might lead to civil litigation later. i was astounded by how much work one single district attorney was suspected to do -- was expected to do. yet a private firm with six or eight lawyers bringing a habeas petition, my office would be staffed with two or three attorneys because these were massive cases and there would be one assistant d.a. with almost no staff support expected to defend that conviction and potentially let someone convicted of murder be released. i defer to your judgment on what resources you think you need, but it has been my experience that the district attorney's office is woefully understaffed in many ways and i think it is a

structural issue that we ultimately need to address because i think it is a problem. >> one of the things i forgot to say is our attorneys do not get over time. i think we both have the same issue. supervisor chu: thank you. we will go to the budget analyst report. >> madam chair and members of the committee. our recommended deductions are detailed and page 55 to 57. that is 100% general fund reductions. $490,000 is on going that would allow an increase of 2.4% in the department's budget. we are also recommending onetime

general fund revenues -- this is the same recommendation the committee considered in this city attorney's office and anticipated to be received by the city attorney's office and can and should be credited to the general fund. we will work with the district attorney in the ensuing week and consider your comments and report back to the committee next week. supervisor chu: if there are no other comments -- supervisor chiu: one of the things that was interesting to me about the proposed budget but we have is that the metrics used to describe the indicator for your office as opposed to the public defender's office are different. i was wondering if you are able to compare apples to apples