May 5th, 2011
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Author: It’s doubtful that college dropout Scott Walker would find political guidance in the timeless words of Shakespeare but perhaps he has found inspiration in the famous quote: “The first thing we’ll do is kill all the lawyers.” At least when it comes to the lawyers who are on the front lines of public safety in the criminal justice system. Lawyers who represent the state’s indigent defendants are no longer getting paid. And now after prosecutors not surprisingly rejected Walker’s proposal to go another 6 days without pay in just the next two months on top of a 20% cut in wages in direct contravention of the contract they negotiated long ago, Walker’s new proposal is to turn every single prosecutor into a part time worker resulting in more than a 20% cut in pay and benefits.
And sure, why not? Let’s pare a little fat back on these overfed hogs! Everyone knows lawyers are lazy, overpaid, and unnecessary, right? So let’s look at just how “overpaid” these workers are.
Ever since the reign of Tommy Thompson, prosecutors have not had “pay progression.” I am not talking about foregoing cost of living adjustments but prosecutors have no hope of earning more as they gain experience and are trusted with more and more complex cases. A prosecutor with 10 years of experience will in all likelihood be making the same as a newly-hired attorney fresh out of law school.
The lack of pay progression might be reasonable if the starting was reasonable. However, a prosecutor in Wisconsin with 10 years of experience can expect to make about $50,000 a year. In Milwaukee County, the average salary for all attorneys is more than double that at $106,940 per year. Not surprisingly, the absurdly low pay has resulted in the loss of 72% of the state’s prosecutors in just the period between 2001 and 2007.
The consequence is that lawyers fresh out of law school are routinely entrusted with ensuring that the state’s most violent and dangerous criminals are locked up. They are quite literally on their own because in light of the exceptionally high turnover, the most experienced prosecutor in the office may well have only a year or two more experience than the most junior member.
The exceptionally low wages not only make many quickly leave the profession, but many find themselves economically unable to even consider that career path. Remember, these prosecutors have doctorate degrees and have spent a minimum of 7 years in college. With law school costing about $60,000 for each of the three years, and even a state school costing $20,000 for each of the four years of undergrad, it is not uncommon for new lawyers to be facing over a quarter million dollars in student loan debt. The result is over $1,300 a month in student loan payments for the next 30 years of the new lawyer’s life. For many, especially those who wish to have children and a home, it is simply not reasonable to accept a job earning $50,000 a year while facing the constant threat of layoff or further wage reductions.
Not surprisingly, prosecutors who have not yet abandoned the sinking ship often find it necessary to work second jobs. Like Amy Menzel who makes more as a waitress than she does as an assistant district attorney or Mike Luell who taught at MATC.
To put this in some perspective, consider the fact that the cop on the witness stand or the bailiff in court likely makes more than the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case. This is despite the fact that the attorney underwent 7 years of schooling and undertook an immense amount of debt, while being a law enforcement officer requires only 2 years of college, generally at a technical college at a fraction of the cost of a university. In light of this former Assistant District Attorney Mike Luell’s decision should be hardly surprising. When he recognized that despite his 8 years of service, his meager salary as an assistant district attorney would not be sufficient to support his new family, he left the Racine County District Attorney’s Office for the Oak Creek Police Department, where he earned a higher salary, better benefits, knew he’d be rewarded for his experience as a police officer and no longer had to live under the constant threat of further wage reductions.
Now Walker wants to cut even further: fire 55 prosecutors; cut the wages of the remaining prosecutors by 2%; and reduce all remaining full-time prosecutors to part-time at 80% full-time equivalence (for an additional 20% reduction in wages). So instead of $50,000 a year, a prosecutor who remains can expect to be earning less than $40,000 a year.
All this at a time when by any measure, there is absolutely no fat to cut. The number of criminal cases has grown in Wisconsin while the number of prosecutors has already been cut. As of 2006, studies showed that Wisconsin needed about 100 more prosecutors to be able to adequately deal with the case load demands.
Despite every bit of evidence demonstrating that prosecutors are grossly underpaid and understaffed, in consistently delusional fashion Scott Walker insists upon going the other way. There is absolutely no other possible result; criminals will go unpunished under Walker’s plan.
This is not a matter of trimming waste from government; this is not a matter of making government more efficient. This is an extremist governor willing to go to any length, including dramatically jeopardizing public safety, in order to fulfill a shortsighted and ideological goal of hurting anyone who happens to receive a paycheck from a government and to avoid even the prospect of not redirecting spending away from self-serving goals like giving taxpayer handouts to businesses or suppressing the turnout of those who tend not to support candidates like him.
For a governor who speaks so much of the “free market” and making government competitive, it is ironic that he refuses to pay the employees he entrusts with keeping the public safe anywhere near a market wage. Like anyone else, the government gets what it pays for. If it wants to treat prosecutors as disposable and accept complex prosecutions of society’s most dangerous criminals being bungled by bottom-of-the-barrel newbie lawyers or prosecutions ignored because there simply is not the staffing to sustain them, we should get used to having criminals unnecessarily left out on the street. If there’s one thing seven years of college will teach you, it’s that you’d be stupid to be a prosecutor in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin.
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