District Attorney Robert Busbee, in his second year as elected chief prosecutor of the four-county Ogeechee Judicial Circuit, has again asked the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners for a sizeable increase in the county’s funding to the D.A.’s Office.

This time, he presented a two-level request. The first-level request for additional funding “to maintain fiscal year 2026” staffing of his agency in fiscal year 2027, in other words to maintain the status quo, would require about $188,539 from Bulloch County. That would  be about a 22% increase over Bulloch County’s $825,670 contribution this year to the D.A.’s Office state-county funding mix, possibly less if the county takes over the provision of “utilities” to his Statesboro office building as he has suggested.

Busbee’s second-level request, for money to hire two more assistant district attorneys, one more investigator and three more legal assistants he says are really needed for a circuit with this population and caseload, would add another $302,185 to Bulloch’s share, making the total increase $490,724, or a 59% rise from the current-year funding.

Last year, after unseating previous District Attorney Daphne Totten in a mid-2024 election and taking office in January 2025, Busbee requested a 78% increase from the Bulloch commissioners, and ended up with a much smaller increase.

“I think we had a 20% increase last year,” he told the Statesboro Herald in an interview last week. “In order to get up to where comparable circuits are, comparable counties are, I think we needed about a 70% increase, which is a big ask for one year, I found.”

This year, he addressed the Bulloch commissioners twice in one week. First, at the invitation of commissioners Chairman David Bennett, Busbee spoke during their regular session the morning of March 17, giving a “District Attorney’s Office 2025 Review” as a lengthy slideshow presentation. Then on the afternoon of March 18, during the first day of the commissioners’ two-day budget retreat, he gave a briefer budget presentation, outlining the two-tiered possible funding increase.

Cites ‘frivolous’ items

One part of the “2025 Review” had Busbee pointing out areas where he believes he and his staff improved efficiency and eliminated some wasteful spending during his first year in office. This implied some criticism of the previous administration.

“Well, I just thought they were frivolous with money, which is kind of crazy, given how underfunded we are,” he said in the interview.

One thing he talked about, without mentioning Totten by name, was a purchase of furniture, which includes the desk, shelving and other items now in his individual office, which he relocated within the agency’s Statesboro building, and also some pieces in the front lobby.

To obtain this furniture, Busbee pointed out to the commissioners, the previous D.A. or staffers spent $2,679 with an interior designer and then $10,109 on the items, “for a total of $12,788 for furniture in two rooms, which to me seems a bit excessive for a government office,” he said.

Eliminated positions

He also pointed out some staff positions which he has eliminated.

One department within the office had two co-directors for a five-member work group, he said. This was Victim Services. The salary and benefits of one of the co-directors cost almost $100,000, or about 50% more than a regular victim advocate, Busbee said. But the other co-director’s position was partly state-paid, and that position has been retained.

In the area of “I.T.” or information technology, the previous D.A. had employed a “courtroom technology engineer,” whose tasks included preparing video or audio DVDs or digital files for courtroom presentation and occasionally helping other staff members with tech support issues, according to Busbee.

“But when we had a real I.T. issue that needed addressing, Georgia Technologies handled it,” he said. “We were paying them $600 a month plus an hourly rate for any actual work they did.”

That plus the $5,928-a-month for the courtroom tech’s pay and benefits reportedly came to $78,354 in one year. Busbee said his staff has replaced both with an upgrade to “unlimited” contracted support from Georgia Technologies for $1,775 a month, or $21,300 a year. He noted this as saving $57,000.

ARPA funding gone

However, some of the personnel cuts can also be seen as the phasing out of positions created with American Rescue Plan Act grants or similar special funding from the COVID-pandemic era.

The ARPA funding amounts were, by calendar year or federal fiscal year, $822,447 for 2023, $1,037,634 for 2024 and $1,039,830 for 2025. Now this funding has ended.

As of 2025, that provided salaries and benefits for three assistant district attorneys, two victim advocates, two investigators, one legal assistant and the courtroom technology engineer.

From the four counties together, Busbee is requesting a $325,440 funding increase to replace some of the last of this “ARPA” money  and maintain the D.A.’s Office at current staffing,

Bulloch County’s “pro rata” or population-based share of that four-county increase would be $156,537 (cents here rounded to nearest dollar).

Additionally, he insists that Bulloch County’s commissioners  should either provide $32,002 for “utilities” at the Statesboro office, or have these services provided directly by the county through its contracts and employees, as at the county’s other buildings. In addition to electricity, phones, internet, water and trash service, Busbee is counting janitorial and security service and document shredding as utilities.

His budget handout included a citation of state law requiring counties to provide “all offices, utilities, telephone expenses, materials and supplies” to a district attorney.

“In most places what the counties do is just say, ‘Here’s your building; we’ll cover your electricity and everything. Like in Effingham, we don’t see a bill,” he said.

So his “status quo” request for additional funding from Bulloch would come to $188,539, or maybe less if the county supplies all those “utilities” directly. The D.A.’s Office Statesboro building, at 1 Courtland Street, is county-owned, but the D.A.’s budget has been paying for these services.

At this point the Ogeechee Circuit D.A.’s staff is serving the four counties from physical offices in the two largest counties. While Busbee now has the Statesboro office set up to serve just Bulloch County, the D.A.’s office area at the Old Effingham County Courthouse in Springfield serves Jenkins and Screven counties, as well as Effingham.

Counties’ shares

With 81,099 residents as of the 2020 census, Bulloch County comprised 48% of the population of the Ogeechee Circuit, while Effingham County, with 64,769 residents, comprised a little over 38%. So the other counties are much smaller by population, Screven County with then 14,067 people, or 8.3% of the circuit, and Jenkins County, with 8,674 people, or 5.1%.

But as of last year, Bulloch County was responsible for 53%, and Effingham County for roughly 30%, of the felony criminal cases the district attorney and assistant district attorneys handled, according charts in Busbee’s “2025 Review.”

For fiscal year 2026, which concludes June 30, the local shares in funding to the agency were, from Bulloch County, $825,670; from Effingham, $765,012; from Screven, $211,005; and from Jenkins, $40,878, for total county funding of $1,842,565. But the counties do not provide all of the D.A.’s Office funding. Some positions are directly or partially state-funded.

Busbee says the basic $325,440 addition is essential to partly make up for the loss of ARPA funding and pay one part-time assistant D.A., one investigator and two legal assistants, just to maintain staffing where it is now. Again, the share requested to Bulloch would be $156,536, plus the possible $32,002 in office utility cost.

Second-level increase

But he also proposed the second-level increase, supported by comparisons to other counties and court circuits.

The closest comparisons were with the Atlantic, Houston and Oconee circuits. With 170,753 people, the Atlantic Circuit, which encompasses Bryan, Evans, Liberty, Long, McIntosh and Tattnall counties, is a literally neighboring area with similar population to the Ogeechee Circuit’s 169,609 residents, also as of 2020.

But even with information not available on two of the counties, Evans and Tattnall, the Atlantic Circuit’s funding from its three other counties totaled over $2.77 million, while the Ogeechee Circuit’s total funding from its counties was $1.84 million, Busbee reported.

Staffing comparison

Comparing four circuits by number of new cases in 2025, he reported that the Ogeechee Circuit, with 2,660 new cases, employed 11 assistant D.A.’s, three investigators, four victim advocates and nine legal assistants.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Circuit with 2,224 new cases, Houston Circuit with 3,602 new cases and Oconee Circuit with 2,960 cases each employed 13 assistant D.A.’s. The Atlantic Circuit  also employed four investigators, four victim advocates and 13 legal assistants. The other two circuits had only two investigators each and also four victim advocates and nine legal assistants.

Beyond the status quo-staffing level, Busbee is asserting that two more assistant D.A.’s are needed in the Ogeechee Circuit, for total of 13, matching those other three circuits, plus one additional investigator, matching the Atlantic Circuit’s total of three, and three additional legal assistants, for a total of 12 assistants, one fewer than the Atlantic Circuit.

He cited an estimated total cost of these six positions at $526,243 to $628,243 and Bulloch’s share of this second tier of added costs as $302,185.

If the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners fully funded both the status-quo staffing increase and the six additional positions, the county’s added funding to the D.A.’s Office would total $490,724, minus any savings that might be realized by a county takeover of the utilities.

The Statesboro Herald asked Busbee what he hopes the commissioners will do.

 “We have to have the ARPA replacement,” he said. “As I said at the retreat, we’re already down several positions. We’re functioning OK now, but we’re functioning at the minimum. We had one of our Major Crimes attorneys leave to go work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

That was previous Ogeechee Circuit Assistant D.A. Matt Breedon, now an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.

“His loss is being felt,” said Busbee.