To: Martin L. Cousineau, Finance Committee Chairperson
From: Prosecutor David Leyton
title
RE: Partial Repayment of STOP Grant funds
recommendation
BOARD ACTION REQUESTED:
Authorization to amend the Prosecutor's Office FY2024 budget to allow for repayment of $14,020.00 in grant funds to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).
BACKGROUND:
In our FY2024 budget, the Prosecutor's Office has a STOP Violence Against Women grant from MDHHS in the amount of $276,368 which provides funding for two full-time assistant prosecutors including salaries and fringes. These two positions are assigned to carry out the goals of the grant which are to combat stalking, domestic violence and criminal sexual assaults. Under the terms of the grant agreement, these two assistant prosecutor positions may only perform work related to cases that involve the aforementioned crimes. In December 2023, MDHHS conducted an extensive, in-depth review of both financial and programmatic components of our grant-funded operations during FY2023. During this review, MDHHS determined that our two APA's did, on rare occasions, go beyond the scope of work allowed by the grant agreement by working on criminal cases that did not meet the above-mentioned goals of stalking, domestic violence or criminal sexual conduct. There were a number of factors that led to this situation, not least of which was an unusually high number of staff vacancies during FY 2023 which imposed enormous pressures on all staff to carry out our prosecutorial duties in the courtroom. This led to our STOP grant APAs helping out their fellow attorneys by covering for them in court when scheduling conflicts arose or handling various hearings when a Judge called upon them while they were in the courtroom. While the legal work they performed was always in furtherance of the overall goals and mission of the Prosecutor's Office, roughly 5% of their work during FY2023 consisted of miscellaneous activities that fell ...
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