When the Cayuga County Legislature considered eliminating a part-time prosecutor position from District Attorney James Vargason's office this year, he was upset.

His already overworked staff, he argued, should not be the only county department to have an existing position cut in the 2005 budget.

Ultimately, county lawmakers decided otherwise.

But Vargason's workload contention has merit. In a comparison with 13 other New York counties that are either neighbors or comparable in size, Cayuga County ranks as one of the more overworked, based on man-hours available per felony case.

Cayuga County had 35.1 man-hours available per felony case in 2003. Oswego County was the most overworked of the counties surveyed, while Tompkins County had nearly twice the time available as Cayuga County per felony case.

But the battle Vargason fought - and lost - over staffing is not unique to Cayuga County. District attorneys across the state report they are understaffed and employing creative strategies to get by.

They cope by prioritizing the felony cases and putting off or giving less attention to lower level cases. Some offices stop prosecuting the lowest level of traffic infractions, offer generous deals to get defendants to plead guilty so they can avoid intensive trial time, or shift to dealing with misdemeanor and violation cases in town and village courts through the mail.

Elaine Nugent, the director of research for the American Prosecutors Research Institute, said this kind of workload crunch is found nationwide. The organization has conducted 70 studies of prosecutor workloads in 11 states and two Canadian provinces.

"What we found is that nearly all the offices we've studied have need of more personnel and are carrying more cases than we would recommend for their personnel," she said.

Nugent noted that comparisons across jurisdictions based on felony cases have limitations because such numbers do not include the hundreds of other misdemeanors and violation cases an office handles, or whether a particular office has non-attorney staff to supplement prosecutors' work.

Nugent said burnout was the most significant effect of short staffing found in the studies.

In Cayuga County, Vargason said the loss of a 30-hour, part-time prosecutor position meant the loss of 1,000 prosecution man-hours per year for his office. Vargason's office has six full-time attorneys and one part-time attorney to handle cases stemming from of the county's population of 81,726.

"I'm always concerned about overworked, underpaid employees," Vargason said. "When you have lawyers in my office barely making salaries in the high 40s and working under incredibly stressful conditions, yeah, burnout becomes a very big concern. I'm fearful of losing the talent."

But the biggest and most harmful change Vargason sees from this new time constraint is not being able to pursue cases as aggressively as his office has in the past.

"Regrettably, I am forced into situations where you end up having to offer dispositions that are far more attractive to defendants than I used to have to offer. It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth," Vargason said.

Other district attorneys share Vargason's concern of offering plea bargains in cases they would have prosecuted more intently if not for staff hour limitations.

"You don't want to get to that point," said John Tunney, district attorney for Steuben County, located in the southern tier and home to Corning. "This is an important business and cases typically involve real victims. The confidence of the public is in our ability to resolve cases in a generally acceptable way. If we're forced for reason of budget concerns to minimize cases and devalue them, I think it's going to hurt the public confidence issue."

Tunney lost a part-time investigator last year. He has five full-time attorneys and two-part time attorneys to handle cases in a county of 99,012.

Chemung County - with a population of 90,143 - has seven full-time attorneys and three part-time attorneys working in its district attorney's office. It was able to recover a staff member cut by funding it through an alternate revenue stream, but the county could use another full-time attorney, said District Attorney John Trice.

His office sometimes makes plea bargain offers when they would want to pursue cases more aggressively, Trice said.

"Sometimes we have to prioritize in regard to what cases are more serious than others," Trice said. "It may come down to having enough evidence to make an arrest, but not to prove a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

With more time to interview witnesses and review evidence with the law enforcement officials who do the investigations, Trice said, his staff could possibly pursue more of those cases.

Cortland County had two part-time prosecutor positions and a part-time investigator position cut last year, but one position was reinstated immediately when District Attorney David Hartnett said his office would have to cut back on traffic ticket prosecutions, a solid revenue stream for municipalities. Four full-time prosecutors and two part-time prosecutors handle cases in Cortland County with a population 48,691.

"I understand the various counties in Central New York have to be mindful of fiscal responsibility. The other side of the coin is if you don't have adequate prosecutorial staff, that quality of life issues result," Hartnett said.

"If we don't have an adequate number of prosecutors, somewhere along the line, because we're working so hard something's going to be missed.

"Either a defendant is going to be found not guilty, when they should have been found guilty, or they will escape on a motion, or a victim is not going to be advocated for properly. You want to live in a community that's safe."

Because of the staffing situation in Cayuga County, Vargason delegated the prosecution of simple traffic cases to the Auburn city corporation counsel and to the various town and village attorneys. His office will still handle more serious traffic matters, including misdemeanor, felony and drug- and alcohol-related traffic infractions.

Vargason also discontinued district attorney nights - nights when a prosecutor was scheduled to appear in person in the town and village courts - and his staff will only appear in those courts on an as-needed basis.

Between the cut position and a June 2004 county policy restricting when compensatory time can be taken, Vargason said his staff is no longer free to work until the job is done, or the occasional 10- to 12-hour days they worked to cover town and village courts held in the evenings.

Some counties had to make those kinds of sacrifices much earlier.

The district attorney's office in Clinton County - home to Plattsburgh and three state prisons - hasn't prosecuted simple traffic infractions for several years, well before district attorney Richard Cantwell took office in 2002. That DA's office also conducts legal business in local courts through the mail, Cantwell said. Cantwell has five full-time and two part-time attorneys for his county population of 81,366.

Neighboring Oswego County faced an even steeper reduction last year in its staff with the elimination of two prosecutors and a secretary. That office now has five full-time attorneys and three part-time attorneys for a population of 123,495.

Oswego County also suspended DA nights in its local courts and now has a walk-in program for defense attorneys to either come in during a prosecutors' open office hours, or contact them by phone or by mail.

A unique challenge is created for district attorneys when county governments reduce their staffing, said Donald Dodd, the Oswego County district attorney,

While a private sector law firm can turn away cases or request outside help, Dodd said, district attorneys are mandated to be in all of the courts in their county, and have to find some way to stretch insufficient staff to meet those mandates.

"That office is responsible for more courts than any other law office in the county," Dodd said.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net