Funding of Constitutional Officers - Virginia Joint Legislative Audit ...

such as is available in education funding, whereby a local office may opt not to use the
positions calculated by the standards. The JLARe staffview, however, is that equity
requires that the positions produced by the standards should be available to the officer.
It should be the officer's decision as to whether to use all ofthose positions.
The Compensation Board response states: "JLARC staffhave chosen for some
reason to ignore actual caseload statistics in its study... JLARC staff should explain
why they believe that caseload statistics are valid indicators of judicial needs but
invalid when applied to prosecutors." These Compensation Board statements contain
five implications that need to be addressed.
First, caseload statistics were not ignored in the JLARC study. The fact that
caseload statistics were examined is discussed in the report summary and on pages 27
and 28 ofthe Commonwealth's attorney staffing report.
Second, the reason that caseload statistics were not actually used in the
staffing standards is also explicitly discussed in the commonwealth's attorney staffing
report. The caseload measures were not included in the staffing standards because
regression analysis indicated that the crime rate data had a greater relationship with
the usage ofper-capita staff time in Commonwealth's attorney offices than any ofthe
caseload measures. This is the same type of test that was applied in each ofthe four
JLARC reports on staffing standards.
Third, JLARC staff did not conclude that caseload statistics would be invalid
ifapplied to prosecutors. The JLARC stafffinding is more limited. The stafffinding is
that the caseload measures that were constructed from currently available data did
not perform as well as crime rate data in explaining the variance in the usage of
Commonwealth's attorney staffin Virginia.
Fourth, the criteria for using indicators in the staffing analysis were two-fold:
first, whether the indicator had an intuitive effect, and second, whether the indicator
had a measurable effect. The decision to include or exclude factors was not based on
opinion as to the importance ofindicators, but on what effects could be measured.
Finally, as for judicial needs, JLARC staff did not examine this issue and
there is no basis for the Compensation Board to imply that JLARC staff have taken a
position on the issue. Nonetheless, the theory behind the Compensation Board's point
is that ifcaseload explains the usage ofjudge time better than alternative measures,
then it must explain the usage of prosecutor time better than alternative measures.
This theory is not self-evident, but needs empirical support. The Compensation Board
does not offer evidence in its response that supports either one of these suppositions.
On the other hand, JLARC staff have tested caseload measures against the usage of
stafftime by prosecutors, and found empirically that crime rate data performed better.
II. COURT SECURITY STAFFING
While it is true that the General Assembly has placed restrictions on security
staffingin the courts, it is also true that judges continue to require security staffing for
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