Bill would give chief justice oversight of cuts to DAs’ budgets

House Bill 17, which would implement some $220 million in cuts to most state agencies, public education and Medicaid, contains an interesting provision related to the state’s district attorneys.

The bill requires the district attorneys and the administrative office of the district attorneys to cut a little more than $2.4 million from their budgets.

But that’s not what’s most interesting to me. What’s noteworthy is who would be in charge of overseeing the cuts under the current version of the bill.

That authority is given to the chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court. The only stipulation placed on the chief justice in cutting the budgets of judicial agencies and district attorneys is that he “shall make reductions… in such a way that the reduction will not prevent a judicial agency or district attorney from performing its statutory responsibilities and will not place it in violation of a binding contract.”

Though I erroneously said otherwise in an earlier version of this posting, the New Mexico Constitution establishes district attorneys as part of the judicial branch. But the public defender’s office is established as part of the executive branch.

In most states, district attorneys are part of the executive branch. Isn’t it kind of odd that, in New Mexico, one side in criminal court cases is part of the executive branch and the other side is part of the judicial branch?

Isn’t it even more odd that a bill is worded in such a way that it would give the top judge in the state the authority to oversee cuts to the offices of prosecutors whose cases might eventually come before his court on appeal?

As I stated higher up in this posting, a prior version of this article erroneously stated that the district attorneys are part of the executive branch in New Mexico.