County Denies More Money For Prosecutor Seven-Page Comparison Of Budgets Fails To Win Over Harris, Roskelley

Saying it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, Spokane County commissioners Tuesday shot down a half-hearted bid by the prosecutor’s office to get more money.

Handed a seven-page comparison of this year’s budgets for the prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices, commissioners Phil Harris and John Roskelley quickly attacked the study and questioned its motives.

The comparison, prepared by administrator Travis Jones of the prosecutor’s office, tried to show that extra money given the public defender’s office this year is creating a “funding imbalance” between the offices.

In the current budget, commissioners have given the prosecutor’s office $4 million. The public defender’s office received $3.67 million.

But last year and again this year, Public Defender Don Westerman has received additional money to handle a burgeoning caseload.

Last year’s increase was $350,000 for the public defender’s office, while the prosecutor’s office received less than $100,000.

Commissioners last month agreed to give Westerman’s office another $200,000.

Roskelley was in no mood for Jones’ suggestion that the prosecutor’s office should be in line for a corresponding budget hike.

“This quid pro quo stuff doesn’t cut it … We don’t appreciate being asked for more money every time the defenders get more,” he told Jones.

Jones replied: “There is no request anywhere in that letter for money.”

At that point, Harris jumped in. “If there’s no request, then I don’t want to hear any more of it.”

Commissioner Kate McCaslin was silent during the discussion.

After the meeting, Jones said the budget exercise was misunderstood by Roskelley and Harris.

His point was to ask commissioners to use what he called “objective” measures for comparing the offices’ budgets, Jones said.

But Harris later said he didn’t appreciate Jones’ tactics.

“What it seemed like to me was ‘neener, neener, neener.’ This all comes from us giving money over the past year and a half to the public defender’s office,” Harris said.

“If the prosecutor’s office really has a need, then go ahead and justify it. Don’t try to say, ‘Why are you giving it to them and not us?”’

Prosecutor Jim Sweetser did not attend the commissioners’ meeting. He started the day working on jury selection in a murder case, then left town when he learned his father had died.

, DataTimes