NEW ORLEANS -- It’s a fight for funding, and on Tuesday it was the city's crime fighters that were battling it out.
With a $68 million budget shortfall looming in New Orleans, City Council members are looking to cut what they can, but crime agencies are now asking for millions more.
Tuesday afternoon the New Orleans City Council heard impassioned budget pleas from the city's top crime fighters.
It was a collective 'no, not me' echoing from the district attorney, criminal court judges, and the criminal sheriff.
"Prices have gone up, costs have gone up, and what I'm seeing in this recommend budget is a decrease," said Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman. "We can't make it."
Gusman pleaded for a $36 million chunk of the city's budget, $16 million more than the mayor is recommending. He said the amount his office receives per inmate hasn't increased in 9 years.
Meanwhile Arnie Fielkow, City Council President, took issue with the Nagin administration for not requiring a detailed explanation of what the extra dollars will produce.
"How can we not have accountability and bench marks by which by budgetary standpoint to evaluate the budget for next year," asked Fielkow.
"We just haven't had the opportunity to work with the sheriff on some meaningful measures that, as he's indicated, he's been pretty busy just trying to put himself back to right."
Criminal Court District Judge Julian Parker was met by a more receptive audience, but had his hands just as cupped and far out---warning of the courts inability to pay or feed jurors, not to mention the possibility of losing its staff.
"You will actually have to lay people off who are currently employed if you don’t get $213,000 added back?" Councilwoman Stacy Head asked Parker.
“Unless they want to work for free," Parker replied.
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro is also hoping for a budget hike, about $1.7 million dollars more that what his office received this year.
"We have convicted more violent criminals in the first six months of 2009, than we did in either all of the years of 2008 or 2007," said Cannizzaro.
The increase, he said, would help keep the city's newly established cold case unit up and running. In the program’s first six months, Cannizzaro said his office arrested 27 people in connection with cases more than seven years old.
And much like Cannizzaro's first round of budget hearings last year, he once again found traction.
"We said we've leave public safety alone, you're number one public safety," said Jackie Clarkson, City Council vice president.
But the city's budget chair, perhaps more pessimistic or realistic, wasn't making any guarantees.
"None of you really need to be cut," said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell. "If anything, we ought to be looking at how to get you more money, I can't sit here and promise you that's going to happen."
The parish's chief public defender also made a case for city funding. Last year, the office scored $500,000 from the city to help represent the area’s poor and accused. They were also promised a $5 chunk off of every traffic camera ticket dating back to April, but that money still hasn't flowed. The council promised to fix that, but said anything more would be unlikely.
