Golden Valley city prosecutor says the office is running out of money with half the year to go

The pot of money Golden Valley set aside for prosecuting low-level offenses is nearly empty, and now attorneys are asking the City Council to nearly double the budget or reconsider how they want to handle some cases.

Attorney Kurt Glaser told council members Tuesday that he anticipates they would need an additional $200,000 — nearly twice the current amount — to keep up with demands this year.

“It might be time to reinvent what we do from the prosecution perspective,” Glaser said, adding the bills reflect the challenges and opportunities that come with trying to rebuild a department that experienced upheaval after George Floyd’s murder, while also responding to new demands from state lawmakers.

The budget crunch adds a new dimension to the ongoing debate about changes to public safety services in Golden Valley, a suburb that is predominantly white but has been growing more diverse. The police department has been trying to rebuild its ranks after veteran officers left in droves. The police force today is younger and more diverse than it was five years ago.

It also continues to endure leadership changes. City officials announced last month that they were placing Chief Virgil Green on leave while they investigated a complaint, the details of which they haven’t disclosed. In the interim, two assistant chiefs are leading the department.

The city budgeted about $215,000 to hire the firm BBG Law, which employs Glaser, to prosecute a range of misdemeanor crimes, including traffic offenses, driving while impaired and some domestic violence reports. But the firm had already billed for about $207,000 worth of work as of June.

City spokesperson Cheryl Weiler said prosecutions are still expected to continue and “no direction has been given to stop services.”

She noted that city departments have some flexibility to shuffle money around internally or to request additional funding from the City Council.

City attorney Maria Cisneros told council members she anticipates the legal department will bring in about $175,000 in revenue this year but that money often goes into the city’s general fund.

Felony cases, including most violent crimes, and cases involving juveniles are typically handled by a county attorney’s office. Many cities, like Golden Valley, handle misdemeanor cases — either with in-house attorneys or by hiring an outside law firm to do the work.

Glaser told Golden Valley City Council members that several changes at the state level have increased prosecutors’ workload, including a new law that took effect in 2024 allowing officials to temporarily seize people’s guns if they pose a threat to themselves or someone else, and prosecutors play a role in handling those requests. In addition, Minnesota public defenders received a funding boost, meaning they have more time to devote to some cases, and prosecutors are working with them more.

But Glaser also told council members some of the increased workload is specific to Golden Valley.

The city handles more drunken driving cases than other similarly sized communities in the region, which he attributed partially to the many highways running through it.

The number of other traffic cases in Golden Valley more than doubled between 2022 and 2024. He noted that 2022 was likely a low year for traffic cases because many communities were still emerging from the travels lulls of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he also said many new officers begin by working on traffic cases so those numbers “might be artificially high just because we’re sending so many new officers just to do traffic.”

Working with new officers, he said, also often requires attorneys to spend more time training them on key issues, such as how to properly complete reports.

“It’s an opportunity and a challenge,” Glaser told council members, adding: “We get to mold them in kind of a post-George Floyd world.”

Tuesday’s meeting wasn’t billed as a formal budget request but rather as a chance to brief city leaders on a key issue and to avoid handing them a surprise at the end of the year. Multiple council members asked Glaser to work with a citizen-police advisory board to get their thoughts on the matter.

Council Members Maurice Harris and Sophia Ginis said they wanted to learn more about the outcomes of cases Golden Valley is prosecuting, including whether they are reducing repeat offenses.

“We are saying we want programs that prevent recidivism,” Ginis said. “We want to bring these values not only to our policing but to our prosecution.”

Council Member Gillian Rosenquist said the figures highlight the struggles city leaders face when they’re making budget decisions and suggested they might have to look at changing other city services to absorb the costs.

“We never get everything we want because of the realities of the budget situation,” Rosenquist said. “It is really hard to think that you would ever direct anyone in law enforcement to do less law enforcement.”