BATON ROUGE — The Metro Council approved additional funding for the district attorney and public defender’s offices Wednesday, but District Attorney Hillar Moore said it still isn’t enough to meet the needs of his office.
Moore said his “hat’s off” to the mayor, the council and the city-parish finance department for finding the additional money, which he plans to use to provide raises for staff who have not received one in three years. But even with the newly budgeted funds, he said his office remains dangerously understaffed, affecting the pursuit of justice.
Mayor-President Sid Edwards proposed adding $850,000 to the district attorney’s office budget and $500,000 to the public defender’s office budget from the city-parish’s unassigned fund balance.
The fund balance can result from tax collections exceeding projections or expenses coming in lower than anticipated. It is not money the city-parish could have counted on when the 2026 budget was approved.
That budget included steep cuts to several offices after the city-parish lost millions in tax revenue to the newly formed City of St. George, which is beginning to provide services to its residents. Voters last year also rejected several tax increases, including one for the district attorney’s office, that would have helped offset much of the loss.
The 2026 city-parish budget cut the appropriation to Moore’s office by about 9% and the public defender’s office by about 10%.
Moore said he may have to file a civil lawsuit to force the city-parish to fund his office’s work. Under state law, the parish must provide “reasonable and necessary” funding for the district attorney’s office.
“This action is not something that I look forward to doing,” Moore said in a statement issued after the council’s vote. “However for the financial stability of our office and the protection of the public, I must consider doing so very soon.”
Moore said his office has lost 36 assistant district attorneys in the past 16 months. The office has 55 positions for assistant district attorneys. Some have become judges or moved to the federal court system, the state attorney general’s office or private practice.
He said his office recently placed job ads in local and statewide legal publications offering $60,000 salaries. “Over the past two weeks, we have had zero responses,” he said.
The shortage of prosecutors means those who remain are increasingly overworked and stressed.
“The stress of the system has had people call it quits,” he said.
Prosecutors in the parish are paid about $55,000 a year. In Arkansas, the starting salary is about $85,000, Moore told UWK.
Moore said it is also difficult to retain investigators, victim assistance staff and administrative workers.
Moore was quick to emphasize that the funding issues do not fall solely on the current mayor or recent administrations. Instead, he said, the office has faced funding challenges for decades. But now, he said, the situation is reaching a breaking point.
The backlog of murder trials stands at 177 cases, the DA said. Clearing that backlog, and preventing it from growing, will require more prosecutors, more public defenders and possibly additional judges.
“We just cannot get out of the backlog,” he said.
Prosecutors currently on staff spend most of their days in court, leaving little time to prepare for complex murder trials. Meanwhile, Moore said, the amount of evidence prosecutors must review has increased dramatically, including police body camera footage, cell phone data and social media records.
“We’re drowning in cases,” he said.
A lawsuit may force the city-parish to put funding for the district attorney’s office ahead of needed road work, or drainage or other projects that he acknowledged are also crucial.
City-parish spokesman Mason Batts, the mayor’s executive director, told UWK that the potential lawsuit limits what city officials feel comfortable saying publicly about the situation. He said the money approved at the last council meeting shows that Mayor Edwards is committed to funding the DA’s office and the other constitutional offices as fully as he can, given available money.
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