Despite Steep Financial Obstacles, Board Approves Only Nominal Additions to District Attorney Budget
Public safety is a major concern for Shasta County voters, but last week, a board majority was hesitant to invest more resources toward the district attorney’s ability to prosecute the county’s relatively high number of criminal cases.
On June 12, at the end of day-long budget hearings, Shasta County’s District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett described the scrappy conditions under which her department operates. Understaffed with near unmanageable caseloads, Bridgett said, her staff is working under a literally leaky roof.
The departmental budget she advocated for when speaking to supervisors last week included capital improvements to the office’s infrastructure, acquiring new equipment to assist in investigations, and the addition of new staffing positions to help ease clerical tasks like liaising with witnesses, which free up higher-paid attorneys for the most critical prosecutorial tasks.
While Bridgett initially requested a budget of $12.9 million, after Shasta County CEO David Rickert reviewed it, he recommended allocating the DA’s budget at $11.1 million, or about $700,000 more than she was budgeted last year. Bridgett responded by making an official appeal, requesting an additional $1.8 million beyond what the CEO had recommended to expand and support her staff.
Bridgett’s appeal, and her presentation, focused on the need for a better-equipped DA’s office to provide follow through for the county’s tough-on-crime stance. Providing adequate pay for attorneys and providing the needed legal secretary positions, Bridgett said, would help the county take on more criminal cases, and ostensibly, send more people to jail.
“There’s not enough staffing,” Bridgett said. “When we’re able to have the staffing levels that we need, we can hold… offenders accountable.”
But her words left the majority of board members unconvinced.
Supervisor Chris Kelstrom compared reviewing Bridgett’s funding requests to thumbing through a Toys-R-Us catalog with his five-year-old daughter at Christmas. His daughter’s wishlist from Santa Claus, he said, comprised “everything in there.”
“Much to her chagrin, she found out that not everything is free,” Kelstrom said pointedly.
After her budget presentation, supervisors probed Bridgett for over an hour. In the end, she walked away with two small wins. One added legal secretary, at a cost of $89,000 annually to the county, and a reclassification of the job description for existing secretary positions to help her retain staffers with slightly more pay as they move up the ladder.
Supervisors did not approve the funding the DA needed to retain her witness coordinator, responsible for liaising between witnesses, victims, law enforcement, and the DA’s office to schedule testimony and arrange for travel. They also denied her request for funding to hire a new deputy district attorney.
What Challenges is the DA Facing?
According to statistics the DA shared, in 2024 there were more than 6,000 cases filed by her office, 42 of which were tried in court. In total, nearly 4,000 victims of crime were served, bringing in nearly $1 million in restitution to Shasta County households.
Bridgett compared her team’s caseload with other counties with a similar number of judges as Shasta, 12 or 13. According to her chart, the DA files approximately double the number of criminal cases as Yolo and Santa Cruz, with about ten less prosecutors.
But that’s not the department’s only obstacle, Bridgett attested. Relatively low pay for prosecutors in comparison to other counties, makes recruiting particularly difficult, she said. The often 7-day work weeks and long hours, she continued, worsens the problem.
“They have such high caseloads, ultimately burning out, saying, ‘you know what, I can go to the private sector and work my 8–5 and make more money'”, Bridgett explained.
But she did not ask for funding to increase her attorney’s salaries. That’s because staff salaries are not something Bridgett has the power to ask for in her annual budget, instead it’s a battle waged behind closed doors between union representatives and the board.
Bridgett’s ability to help relieve her attorney’s workload and more effectively recruit and retain staff in order to prosecute cases, lies in how much she’s granted in her budget. Additions to that budget could help shore up the critical work loads of attorneys with key support staff and tools. But only if the board agrees that help is needed, and approved it.
Prosecutorial workload has also increased with recent legislation changes at the state level that require more scrupulous and timely steps in the process of prosecution. Those include race blind charging, which requires police reports to be redacted of racial descriptions before they’re reviewed by prosecutors to prevent bias-informed charges. Another policy change was the passage of Prop 36, which has significantly increased DA caseloads across the state, without commensurate funding.
There’s also the extra workload created by the Redding Police Department’s use of body worn cameras. That will be exacerbated when the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and likely, Anderson Police Department also implement cameras. Bridgett described how reviewing the footage has drawn out her team’s investigative process.
“If you take the example of a driving under the influence case, pre body-worn camera,” she began, “it resulted in a police report to us — we would have the report maybe 10 pages long — along with the Department of Justice blood results.”
“Now on top of that, we’ve got a [potentially] three hour video to watch. And while I fully believe and think body-worn cameras are a very good thing, they also come with a lot of additional work,” she said.
A Long Discussion and Minor Compromise
After Bridgett’s presentation, the board discussed the District Attorney’s operations at length.
Supervisor Corkey Harmon tried to challenge Bridgett on whether or not the body-worn cameras would actually increase her department’s workload, stating “it seems to me like the body cams might decrease the potential workload for cases, meaning open and close because we have evidence.”
“We’ve all seen the little pop-ups where the body cam gets somebody that got out of the car and they’re so drunk they can’t hardly walk,” Harmon said.
Bridgett explained to him that while body-worn cameras are often vital pieces of evidence, an attorney’s legal standard requires that the prosecution reviews an entire piece of footage, not just the “30 seconds or 1 minute” videos that go viral on social media.
Harmon went on to ask why the City of Redding can’t “kick in” and reimburse the county for the cost it takes to review Redding Police Department’s (RPD) body-camera footage, as well as other law enforcement agencies whose cases fall under the purview of the DA.
Supervisor Allen Long explained that answer to Harmon, reminding him that the role of prosecution is the county’s job, not that of city police.
Long — the only supervisor with a law enforcement background — went to great lengths to advocate for the DA, insisting that adding more staff to the DA’s team would be a “great bang for our buck,” and help ease the bottleneck in the public safety process. But when Long suggested that his experience lends him a particular kind of subject matter expertise, Supervisor Kevin Crye pushed back.
“Yeah, but does that mean maybe Mr. Harmon would be the subject matter expert on finances, because he’s worth the most money?”
“That’s not the same,” Long said, pausing briefly to chuckle. “My opinion is based on experience.”
Long made a motion to add two legal secretaries, which initially died for a lack of second. Eventually, following a protracted discussion and multiple amended motions, the board unanimously arrived at the decision to add a secretary and expand the job classification for the position.
After the hearing was adjourned, Bridgett told Shasta Scout that while she was disappointed that some of her top priorities remained unmet she felt that the board’s decision was a “step in the right direction.”
“All of our other [public safety] agencies can work really, really hard, and they do work really hard,” she said. “But without our ability to prosecute, offenders really are not held accountable.”
Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
Comments (14)
Comments are closed.
Related Articles
Wintu people say proposed reforms to a state list of tribes is erasure, threatens their homelands
A state commission’s proposal to remove Wintu and other federally non-recognized tribes from a consultation contact list would leave cultural sites vulnerable to destruction, tribal members say, and represents a form of unconstitutional discrimination.
Decision on city financing for the Ironman competition tabled by Redding City Council
The council’s decision followed a tense discussion on financial spending. The item will be brought back into discussion on Feb. 17. An Ironman official says he’s not concerned about the delay.
Shasta man had illicit marijuana grow and underground bunker in addition to illegal weapons, CHP says
A press release from the California Highway Patrol alleges that Michael Kamfort was operating an illegal grow when he was arrested on weapons charges, including manufacturing a “ghost gun,” on Tuesday in Anderson.
They’re trying to set up the DA for failure, who they blatantly have tried over and over again to discredit. They Crye/Jones cronies are a bunch of narcissistic liars who want toe the line toadies to enrich themselves. They cry over the lack of funding, but give themselves raises and expect others to work for peanuts. They fund conspiracy theories and the tinfoil hat wearing wackos, wasting taxpayer dollars and creating more chaos. They expect us to trust the latest hire for the ROV while dismantling our legal rights (it will be no surprise if we find errors in the next election that will try to benefit this cabal). They waste time and money in writing worthless letters. They have no time or no money available for REAL SOLUTIONS to crime, drugs, poverty, healthcare, etc. Meanwhile, the jail is a revolving door, the poor suffer, the seniors are ignored and our “children” are told to shut up and speak only when spoken to.
Our county does not need more prosecutors—it needs smarter justice. Too many cases that should never make it past intake are instead funneled into plea bargains, not because they are strong or worthy of prosecution, but because the system prioritizes volume over fairness.
In reality, many of these cases are weak, overcharged, or lack sufficient evidence. Yet they proceed because the District Attorney’s office is incentivized to secure convictions, not pursue justice. This dynamic is compounded by an overwhelmed public defender system that often encourages plea deals—not out of sound legal strategy, but due to crushing caseloads and systemic pressure to move cases quickly.
This isn’t justice. It’s a machine designed to process people, not protect rights. Reducing the number of DAs would force a more thoughtful, restrained approach to prosecution—one that demands stronger cases, protects defendants’ rights, and returns focus to serious, violent crime. We don’t need more prosecutors. We need a system that values integrity over conviction stats.
Steve: I appreciate this perspective. Good food for thought. Thank you.
I think Sup. Kelstrom could have made his point without the Toys-R-Us analogy. Very demeaning and unnecessary.
The headline of this article seems pretty misleading . “Board Approves Only Nominal Additions to District Attorney Budget”
Since when is a $700,000 increase from the prior year budget ” Nominal”. Thats an almost 7% increase. I wouldnt consider 7% nominal given inflation was under 3% for most of last year and is now closer to 2%.
Did any other County Department receive a 7% increase in their budget?
Did any County Departments see their budget decrease from last year ?
What is the total increase or decrease in the County’s expected Revenue from last year ?
And it might have been appropriate for Mr Kallepalli to point out that the District Attorney had requested a $ 2,500,000 increase from last years budget amount. Had the Board approved her request that would be a 24% increase over last years budget.
I get it that Shasta Scout isnt really an unbiased news source. But stop with the misleading headlines and report more facts .
Dale: Nominal means a small amount. The additions that were approved compared to what were asked for were very small. I can see it from your perspective but this is very much a factual headline. You wanted us to compare last year to this year, department against department, and year over year revenue. But not every county department faces similar challenges and most department’s workloads are not being impacted in the way the DA’s workload is by new regulations and policies. Similarly, the impact of the DA’s budget on public safety is outsized compared to many other departmental budgets, and public safety is frequently noted as the leading concern of Shasta County residents.
Thank you for the reply. We can agree to disagree that a 7% and $700,000 increase in nominal .
How about a follow up article that answers my questions:
Did any other County Department receive a 7% increase in their budget?
Did any County Departments see their budget decrease from last year ?
What is the total increase or decrease in the County’s expected Revenue from last year ?
Dale: What our headline refers to is the additional budget items requested. The budget appeal totaled $1.8 million. Of that about $200k or less was approved. That’s nominal.
So the drunk wants more money, to put more people in jails where there is already no room. So glad our system is working. And the reason our DA get so many wins is they rarely ever have you show on the court date your given, they wait and wait and just when a “criminal” thinks he’s in the clear, they hit the courts on the last possible to file, with next to no advance notice, and if you aren’t there you’re found guilty for not showing. Then it’s into the system where they want you to stay. And come on, how is putting over 4000 people into jail and collecting 1 million in restitution a positive? How much did it cost the county to house them in jail, to put them on probation, house arrests, the actual court proceedings, and of course once in the system some ungodly amount of offenders get out, then reoffend, costing more money. Why not focus on getting the high profile dangerous ones off the street instead of well anyone who in
This is so true. I once got caught up in the grinder of “justice” here in Shasta County. They waited 11 months and 3 weeks to file the “charges” against me. They had one year to do so. Offered me a plea bargain, which I declined. I even represented myself in the case because I do not trust the public defender’s office, ever notice how most of them end up at the DA’s office after a short period being a public defender? Another tip, NEVER waive your right to speedy trial. This puts them on the hook to actually produce their evidence in a timely manner. They cannot. I actually wanted a trial so I could force the officer involved to answer my questions, thus proving my innocence. Guess what happened? They dismissed the case because “the officer was not available to appear at the trial date”. A pathetic waste of time for all involved, and all because I stood up for my rights and forced their hand.
As last week, I sat through a supervisor’s meeting where our district attorney prosecutors repeated the case; they are being shafted. And they are. I expect the county will lose even more of these professionals soon. But the real story is the Crye, Kelstrom, and Corky Clown Car Circus, where they display elementary cognitive skills, comparing prosecutors to a five-year-old child in Toys R ‘ Us, where the attorneys are asked, “Why are you complaining? Our sheriffs are happy with low wages?” And of course, we can count on Kindergarten Corky. Next, he’ll ask, “Why should we pay you more? You haven’t killed any wolves!”
These BOS clowns love to talk about law and order. But they have loud mouths and tiny sticks and won’t pay for bigger ones. After all, the Clown Car Circus doesn’t like District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett because, evidently, Bridgett is not MAGA enough for them. In fact, they have been trying to figure out how to get rid of Bridgett since she won the job 58% to 41% over the Clown Car Circus and militia-endorsed Erik Jensen. Yep, no money for law enforcement and prosecutors, but millions for MAGA election propaganda and clown car acts like the Election Commission, trips to Mr. Pillow and Trump, $40,000 for secessionist Chriss Street, and even donating thousands to L. Hobbs’ legal team to help her sue the county, while we taxpayers spend over $107,000 defending against Hobbs in court! In fact, it seems one of the acts in the Clown Car Circus by the name of Jones might be suing the county for attacking the D.A.! The Clowns are spending millions of our taxpayer dollars on just about everything but law enforcement and the prosecution of criminals. It’s past time to jettison the Clown Car Circus. We can’t afford their pathetic show any longer
Sorry, I meant Jones might be suing the county to ATTACK our D.A. Bridgett, so there’s more money down the drain should this be the case. And, we aren’t even talking about the fact that if the Jones, Crye, Kelstorm, Street, Corky Avitar get his “Big Beautiful Bill” past, our county will be losing food for working families, for school kids, and Meals on Wheels for our seniors, as well as losing Veterans services, not to mention 62,000 people on Medicade and even Section 8 housing. And the Jones, Crye, Kelstorm, Street, and Corky Cartel have not even considered this. This Cartel needs to be VOTED OUT!
1 Secretary. Spiffing. This is a petty, vengeful move by the Crye-Jones gang who have a personal vendetta on our popularly elected highly successful District Attorney whose team performs miracles with little support from the BOS. I see his strategy (and Jones before him) as multi pronged: destabilize local government by harassing, blackmailing, terminating or forcing out good employees and backfill with compliant docile minions, fully dependent cronies who exist to do their master’s bidding. Together with his 2 cronies, Crye would wrest control of power from our legitimate government. Case in point, the Crye-Jones Outfit and their coterie of shrieking corn fed harpy hair bears have waged a relentless war on our Registrar of Voters over the last several years. The newly appointed temporary Registrar of Voters is a law suit attracting unqualified poseur whose claim to fame is hacking programs to fix elections. Nice. The Crye gang’s MO? Ideology and obedience over experience, integrity, and qualifications.
This move is underwhelming and grossly inadequate. By placing public safety last, the Crye 3 are effectively setting up all allied LE agencies for failure. Ultimately we the citizens lose. It’s on you, Kevin. And Harmon and Kelstrom are your accomplices. Bad show.
Robert…you’ve tapped into the real story here in ShaCo…you did leave out one player in the mix…Chriss Street; he’s the puppet master of the 3, and temporary majority…Crye, Kelstrom & Harmon. Change is a comin’.