A staffing crunch has led to lawsuits accusing the Athens DA's office of failing to do the job properly. A new pay bump may help.

ATHENS, Ga. — For several months, District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez appealed to the Athens Clarke County Mayor and County Commissioners to do what she could not — increase the pay for attorneys.

However, not everyone believes pay is the primary issue. Other prosecutors have said they left frustrated with policy changes outlined in a memo on her first day in office.

Both issues may soon be resolved, helping fill long-standing vacant positions on her team.

“Our starting salary for our lawyers is at least 10,000 less than the next circuit over,” Gonzalez told the board at a meeting in January.

11Alive Investigates researched that claim. According to open records from courts around Athens Clarke County, two circuits do have a higher starting salary. But it’s only about $3,000 higher in the Ocmulgee Circuit and $7,000 in Piedmont. The other courts adjacent to the Western Judicial Circuit — which includes Athens Clarke County and Oconee County — offer the same or lower starting salary. 

Commissioners did approve funding for their own study in February to look beyond the starting salary. Attorneys are paid on a scale depending on experience and areas of specialty. 

“I think it’s fair due diligence on our part to say what component of this may be the salary scale,” Mayor Kelly Girtz said.

The results have not yet been made public, but Mayor Girtz noted the board has already approved $150,000 in funding to make adjustments.

The DA’s office is a mix of state and county-paid positions for a total of 17 assistant district attorneys. Right now, there are seven. Even with a $6,000 hiring incentive, the office is short of more than half its attorneys and any pay increase will only affect a handful of people who are listed as county employees.

“We know that we’re in a difficult time around hiring generally,” Girtz said.

All Clarke County government positions, from the solicitor’s office to county attorneys, use roughly the same pay scale. Still, data shows the turnover rate in the DA’s office during the past two years has been twice as high. 

When 11Alive asked what would be the desired starting salary to attract and retain attorneys, the DA’s office declined to comment. But a spokesperson did say regardless of the study outcome they "look forward to continuing to work with the Athens Clarke County government to identify innovative recruiting strategies to hire and retain the best and the brightest prosecutors to serve the community."

Turnover is to be expected when a long-time sitting district attorney leaves office, as happened in this case. DA Gonzalez came into office with a new perspective on how she wanted things to run issuing a memo on day one with a new set of policies. 

The memo didn’t sit well with some. Alex Cidado left about three months after Gonzalez was elected. 

“I left the office because of the toxic environment there and unfortunately the belief that I could not do my full duty and hold up my oath,” Cidado said.

The memo said, in part, her office would not prosecute low-level drug offenses and that prosecutors should take another look at cases involving mandatory minimum sentences. 

Those policy changes have been used in a lawsuit against Gonzalez, claiming her office is not properly prosecuting cases. 

On Monday, DA Gonzalez announced she was withdrawing that memo, as well as one issued in the second year of her term.

“She profoundly believes in the values expressed in those memorandums. She designed them to ensure that her prosecutors focused on cases where serious harm occurred and where they had the resources to support victims of harm, which her voters elected her to do,” her office said in a written statement.

A spokesperson said the memorandums had become a “source of considerable scrutiny and misinterpretation” so the decision was made to withdraw them to remove distractions from the work that needed to get done.

The hope is that this change, along with the salary increases once announced, will help the DA’s office finally fill open spots.

If that doesn’t work, “then I think it’s incumbent on the district attorney to look at all the other management things that are going to make a stronger office,” Mayor Girtz said. “Those are of course her formal responsibilities as the lead prosecutor in this county.”