Arlington’s top prosecutor is seeking more state and county funds this year — while trying to keep pace with an ongoing rollercoaster of federal funding decisions.
Before a now-rescinded memo on a federal spending freeze sent agencies around the country scrambling for answers this week, Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti was already lobbying for a boost in local funding for her office.
At the state level, she is throwing her support behind the Virginia Access to Justice Act, which seeks around $250 million from the state legislature to increase funding for prosecutors, public defenders and crime victims.
This would increase state funding for the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office for Arlington and Falls Church by about $1 million, Dehghani-Tafti told ARLnow.
Dehghani-Tafti is also approaching the Arlington County Board with numerous budget asks this year — reiterating some old requests, like funding to improve access to prosecution data.
In an email to ARLnow Tuesday, however, the Commonwealth’s Attorney suggested that recent developments across the Potomac have added another dimension to her priorities.
“I spent the day trying to do damage control,” Dehghani-Tafti wrote. “The magnitude of bad is hard to even imagine, let alone describe. And as far as my office, it will hobble our ability to serve victims, stall our efforts to clean up our data even further, and eviscerate our diversion programs with our community-based partners.”
Dehghani-Tafti, whose office received a $1 million federal grant in October to expand its diversion program partnership with a local nonprofit, did not respond to a request for further comment today.
This afternoon, the White House withdrew its original memo proposing a temporary pause in federal grants, although some confusion remains.
White House decisions aside, here in Arlington, Dehghani-Tafti is requesting over $1 million in additional funds from the County Board.
- Funding for two assistant commonwealth’s attorneys ($360,000)
- Funding to improve public access to data on prosecutions ($300,000)
- Funding to expand referrals to restorative justice programs ($250,000)
- Funding for one full-time investigator ($145,000-$170,000)
A lack of funding for better data processing has been particularly troublesome for Dehghani-Tafti’s office over the years.
Public access to prosecution data in Arlington is significantly more limited than in neighboring Fairfax County, which rolled out a dashboard last year with detailed breakdowns of the county’s criminal caseload.
Dehghani-Tafti’s latest memo to the County Board reiterates concerns about her office’s current case management system, calling it “a stumbling block to collecting and analyzing data.”
“These systems were not designed to produce data, although they are potentially capable of doing so,” Dehghani-Tafti wrote. “We have tried to fix this problem with various codes and software, but our inescapable conclusion is that our system is not designed to produce data beyond case counts.”
Requested funding would cover the cost of two temporary employees “to clean up our data.”
“My office has tens of thousands of cases that are impossible to sift through individually without significant time and attention,” Dehghani-Tafti said. “The community demands and deserves accurate, meaningful data that makes the work of the office more transparent.”
