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

------------Exhibit 2-------------
Assigning Cost Responsibility
to the State and Local Governments
I Cost Responsibility Criteriai
State Requirement Normal Local Government
or Request? Operation or Request?
Cost
Responsibility
Assignment
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
No
State
Local
Shared
Shared
Source:
JLARC staffanalysis.
In the third case, responsibility is assigned to both the State and localities.
This is because there is a clear State requirement or request, and the service is either
a normal local government operation or has been requested by local officials. It is
reasonable to expect both the State and localities to be responsible for the cost of such
services. The relative proportion ofcosts to be borne by each must be determined in an
additional step, to be discussed later in this chapter.
Finally, in the fourth situation, there is neither a State nor a local requirement
or request that services be provided, so there is no clearjustification for assigning
the costs to either the State or local governments alone. Therefore, it is appropriate for
the cost responsibility for such services to be shared.
Applying the Framework to Constitutional Officers' Seryices
The framework for assigning cost responsibility was applied to each service
category of the constitutional offices. Descriptions of the service categories are presented
in the four JLARC reports on staffing standards for the constitutional officers.
An Example: Cost Responsibility Assignments for Sheriffs. In order to
illustrate how the cost responsibility assignments can be made, Exhibit 3 shows the
assignments for sheriffs' offices and regional jails. Eight service categories were
identified for the sheriffs' offices. The services are related to law enforcement, court
services, jail operations, and general office administration.
For those localities in which the sheriffs provide law enforcement services, the
sheriff is responsible for enforcement of the State criminal and traffic codes. So, in
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