This is part one of a two-part series. Part II, which will detail how Galligan and the county legislature are working towards a resolution, will appear in Tuesday's Democrat.

SULLIVAN COUNTY –– Last month, District Attorney Meagan Galligan appeared in front of legislators to ask for better salaries for her assistant district attorneys (ADAs). She said salaries in their current state have hurt her ability to retain attorneys, and at the beginning of this month, she had only four ADAs on staff (with four vacancies), handling over 5,000 open prosecutions.

This comes at a time when ADAs have more work in front of them than their predecessors due in part to discovery reform, which means ADAs must now prepare materials across 21 different categories before they can announce readiness and move a case towards trial.

Also, the implementation of body cameras on NY State Troopers, even though it's something Galligan supports, has added a significant amount of time to her office’s workload, as they must watch the footage from each trooper on scene.

With the current labor shortage and attorneys being a scarce resource, base salaries have gone up across the board for attorneys in New York State. Therefore, DA’s offices statewide are losing people to the private sector.

But Galligan is also having a hard time competing with other DA’s offices in the region.

In Sullivan County the starting salary for an ADA is just over $53,000. At 14 years of experience, a Sullivan County ADA earns $87,500.

According to Galligan, in Dutchess County, ADAs start at $69K, increasing to $86K-plus in two years. Orange County ADAs start at $63K, increasing to $84K within five years. Putnam County ADAs start at $65K, increasing to $85K at about four years, and Westchester County ADAs start at $68K, increasing to $93K at five years on the job.

Sullivan County ADAs also make less than their peers in the County Attorney’s office. Assistant Sullivan County Attorneys currently start around $80K.

“It takes a special kind of dedication to public service to be a prosecutor,” said Galligan. “These lawyers come into this job knowing they will not earn as much as others in private practice, and commit themselves to doing the right thing. They work day and night, hand in hand with other public servants, to see that justice is done for the entire Sullivan County community. I am proud of the good, hard work my prosecutors do to keep us safe.”

While it isn’t all about the money for some prosecutors, according to Educationdata.org, the average law school graduate owes $160,000 in student loan debt, which is a factor young attorneys often have to consider.

When Galligan took over as acting district attorney on January 1, 2020, the county budget had allotted for 10 ADAs. However, since she vacated her ADA position and they already had one open, there were only eight ADAs. As the COVID crisis hit in March and April and budgetary shortfalls were expected, Galligan agreed to work with the ADAs she had for the rest of the year and not fill those two positions.

For the 2021 Budget, with the pandemic still raging, County Manager Josh Potosek asked all department heads to cut their budgets by at least 10 percent. In order to save the eight positions in her office, Galligan again agreed not to fill those two vacant positions and eliminated them from the budget.

While Galligan believed ADA salaries needed to be addressed, the county wasn’t in a fiscal position at the time to ask for raises.

However, according to Galligan, ADA starting salaries are the same now as they were under former District Attorney Steve Lungen, back in the late 2000s.

Jumping in

The current lack of manpower has led to Galligan jumping into the fray, by doing things such as covering night court. Galligan explained that this takes time away from the important public safety decisions that a district attorney should be making.

The DA is involved in the most serious investigations in the county, which currently includes the attempted murders of two troopers in the Town of Mamakating that Galligan is personally handling, as well as other pending homicide cases in the county.

Also, she explained that the DA needs to be involved with police and public safety officials when there are important events coming up, coordinating and making sure that the public is safe, but also being involved with them in the management of their departments, often to determine if there are Brady issues. (A Brady list is usually put together by a prosecutor's office or a police department consisting of the names and details of law enforcement officers who have had sustained incidents of untruthfulness, criminal convictions, candor issues, or some other type of issue placing their credibility into question.)

“Those are important decisions that often require an intense amount of research, interviewing witnesses and making those determinations together with our police officials,” she said. “That's a really serious portion of my job and it's important because if we don't police our own police, then the public shouldn't trust us.”

Another key part of Galligan’s job is direct oversight of the office’s ADAs. She explained that there’s always something that can be done better in the county and educating her ADAs in respect to that is an important part of the DA’s job.

Their decisions can have a big impact. For example, when Galligan was an ADA, she and former District Attorney Jim Farrell attacked the issue of reported burglaries in the county, which resulted in a 60 percent decline.

In addition to their current work with Hope Not Handcuffs in regard to the opioid epidemic, the DA’s office is also trying to rework strategies to attack the DWI problem in Sullivan County, Galligan explained. She mentioned the possibility of creating something similar to drug court for people who are accused of driving while intoxicated to get them into treatment and monitor them.

“We know that most people who commit driving while intoxicated-related offenses are recidivists,” she said, “by the first time you're caught criminally on a DWI, studies show that you've probably driven while you were intoxicated, more than 20 or even 50 times in some studies.”

Galligan noted that she must also monitor all of the decisions coming out of the state’s appellate divisions and court of appeals to make sure that her office is honoring the law as it exists.

“We know that's evolving every day in New York State and federally, and I need to make sure that my ADAs are up on that,  up on the status of the law and that we're implementing best practices in every case that we prosecute,” she said. “So it's unusual for a district attorney to be covering Justice Court prosecuting misdemeanors and violations because of those kinds of decisions that need to be made.”