LAKE COUNTY — Michigan’s Attorney General warning about a possible government shut-down and how steep cuts to her office could affect one Northern Michigan county that, right now, has no prosecutor.
The House Republican budget plan includes trimming a little more than $38 million from the state Attorney General’s office.
She said that would force her to cut more than 15 percent of her workforce, that’s about 96 full-time workers.
Nessel said if that happens, she won’t have the staff to cover the prosecutor’s office in Lake County.
“We’re in Lake County right now. As of October 1st, we will no longer have the staff in order to handle the prosecutions for Lake County. It will be literally like the purge there. They will have no prosecutors in Lake County if this budget actually gets passed,” said Nessel.
Sheriff Rich Martin said he was disappointed to hear of the possible changes.
“We should never worry about not having prosecution in this county because the attorney general is not going to do that, in my opinion,” Martin.
Martin said he was disappointed to hear of the possible changes. He said after years of issues with the prosecutor’s office, they were finally making headway.
“Anything is better than the prosecutors we’ve had in the past. So, I mean, I hate to say that, but, you know, the Attorney General’s office has been exceptionally well to work with [and] has done the cases that we’ve needed them to do,” said Martin.
The Attorney General’s office stepped in after the former prosecutor Gregory Mick resigned in June.
The sheriff said they were cautiously optimistic when Mick arrived, but it didn’t last long.
“We were excited there was going to be somebody new or somebody that seemed to be fired up and so forth and it was anything but that. There wasn’t any improvement at all. But then again, he was. only here for six months, so, you know, there wasn’t any time to really judge a whole lot,” said Martin.
The prosecutor before Mick, Craig Cooper, the sheriff has described as ineffectual.
Two union representing the sheriff’s office issued a no confidence vote against Cooper in 2023.
“Communication was a big thing. Cases not even being reviewed. I think witnesses being called that weren’t involved in the case or not, the primary witness and so forth. The officers would all show up and would not even know what cases were going and then basically they would get dropped or get dismissed,” said Martin.
Martin said even if Nessel is forced to pull staff he isn’t too worried. Worst case scenario-they have a backup plan. We have other prosecutors from other counties that will step in when a prosecutor takes a vacation, or if there’s an emergency, something like that,” said Martin.
He said a prosecutor could be appointed at any time.
“Eventually we will have a prosecutor here, and that will probably be way sooner than later, especially with these things coming down,” said Martin.
In any event, he said Lake County will be ok.
“We’ve been operating at a worst-case scenario for a long time when it comes to getting stuff prosecuted. So, we’re trying to piecemeal and put a band aid on stuff and finagle think outside the box, get things done. But at the end of the day, there’s never going to be a time where there’s not going to be prosecution,” said Martin.