The Sacramento County District Attorney's office is set to lose its misdemeanor prosecution unit under a newly approved county budget, a move that the office has described as a caseload crisis. The cut means that an entire category of lower-level criminal cases will no longer have a dedicated team to prosecute them, raising concerns about how those offenses will be handled going forward.
District Attorney Thien Ho took his warning directly to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, testifying before the board about the impact the cuts would have on his department. He said his office is already operating on razor-thin margins, stretched so far that several units are, in his words, running on fumes even before the latest reductions take hold.
The scale of the work now at risk is significant. According to the district attorney, the misdemeanor unit filed 15,000 cases in the last year alone. That volume underscores how much routine criminal activity flows through the unit, and how large a gap could open up once the dedicated team is gone.
The cases in question cover a wide range of everyday offenses. The misdemeanor caseload includes petty theft, vandalism, auto burglaries, trespassing and indecent exposure. These are precisely the kinds of crimes that residents and small business owners often point to when they describe a sense of disorder in their neighborhoods and commercial districts.
Despite those concerns, the new budget was approved. It passed in a four-to-one vote and is due to take effect on July 1, at which point the misdemeanor unit will no longer exist. The decision sets a firm deadline for the change, leaving little time before the office must adjust to operating without the team.
The budget was not approved unanimously. Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez was the lone no vote, objecting to the public safety reductions. Rodriguez pointed to Proposition 36 and its strong statewide support for cracking down on crime, arguing that cutting funding from the district attorney's office and the sheriff's department runs counter to what California voters have said they want.
For the district attorney, the practical consequences are clear. With the misdemeanor unit gone, any such cases that are still filed are likely to take considerably longer to prosecute. The office has framed the situation as a crisis of caseload and capacity, warning that the system will be left working with even thinner resources than before.