In the roughly six months that Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann has been in office, he has already established himself as a different prosecutor than his former boss, James Vargason.

The longtime chief assistant district attorney under Vargason is pushing for tougher plea deals and taking more cases to trial, but the changes have not come easy. Budelmann has had to deal with an increase in felony arrests and a staffing shortage, and defense attorneys are still trying to adjust to a different approach.

“You have to ask yourself, 'Where do you draw the line in the sand?” Budelmann said. “I have probably taken a stronger stance on burglaries, sex abuse and drug dealing, so more of those cases have been heading towards court for trial.”

Defense attorney Norman Chirco said the past sixth months have been an adjustment period for him and his colleagues as they learned where Budelmann was going to stand on criminal issues.

“We are seeing proposed dispositions which carry a greater jail or prison sentence than we were seeing before,” Chirco said.

While he has pushed for stricter sentences for violent felony crimes, Budelmann believed the change was minimal.

“I don't think I am that much different than Jim (Vargason), but it has really just been a big testing period,” Budelmann said. “I think the defenders are testing the new guy to see what my resolve is.”

The testing period has corresponded with a large number of cases filling up the court calendar. January and February saw a sudden influx of sex abuse, weapon and robbery crimes as Budelmann stepped into his roll as DA. According to data released by the state Division of Criminal Justice, there were 114 felony dispositions in all of 2007. This year's pace is well ahead of that figure. By mid-June of this year, felony dispositions had already reached 92 cases, the DA's office reported.

In the years Budelmann worked as the county's chief assistant district attorney, the office would handle about 150 felony cases annually.

The increase of felony cases and the mixture of defense attorneys expecting better deals for their clients has caused an increase in pending court cases, Chirco said.

“He is trying to be harder on crime, but there can be a down side to that,” Chirco said. “It can create a situation where there are more cases that are going to trial. It's going to take a while for a balance to be found. I think it won't be within the first six months, the real test will be a year down the road. If he can do what he's doing now and not be detrimental to the system, then he will be successful.”

Two cases have already gone to trial this year, with three more felony cases on the schedule before the end of June. The average number of felony trials in Cayuga County since 2004 was three trials a year, according to the DCJ.

Despite the increased workload, a strong and proactive stance on crime is important to help protect county residents from criminals, Budelmann said. During his campaign, Budelmann said he wanted to address the underlying issues that caused crime in Cayuga County and not just deal with criminals as they were arrested.

But that doesn't mean he's looking to throw every criminal behind bars and forget about them. Budelmann said he is trying to tackle the county's drug crime problem by focusing not just on dealers, but on the addicts who create a market for illegal drugs.

Cayuga County Judge Mark Fandrich said many crimes committed in Cayuga County were drug-related acts aimed at supporting an addiction. Drug addictions were also an underlying cause in some family breakups as parents lost custody of children or got divorced, the loss of homes or the destruction of lives

As long as addicts continued to perpetrate crimes to feed their addiction, all members of society would be victimized, Budelmann said.

“People think drug crimes are a victimless crime, but that's just not the case,” Budelmann said. “There are lots of victims. The people who get robbed to feed the addiction, the addicts who lose their lives, the addicts' friends, family and children, the job that loses an employee and the tax payers who pay for the programs and the prisons. Everyone pays for it.”

Budelmann believes the best way to clean up the county's drug problem was to attack the addiction itself. By sending addicts to drug treatment programs while they are in prison or by using the misdemeanor drug court, Budelmann said, people can get the help they needed to get off drugs and rebuild their lives.

“No matter how many dealers you take off the street there is still an addiction,” Budelmann said. “If dealers can still make money off the addiction they will keep coming back.”

For some addicts, though, harsher sentences might be the only solution, Budelmann said.

“You can provide the services they need, but you can't make people take if they don't want to change,” Budelmann said. “A looming sentence over their heads can sometimes be the influence they need to get treatment.”

To that end, Budelmann and his office have been working on a felony drug court.

Assistant District Attorney Charles Thomas said the court would enroll nearly 30 people into a program that could penalize anyone who failed to live up to their obligations. The time-intensive program would ensure that everyone who was enrolled received the help they needed to deal with their addiction.

The program would offer classes, programs and mandatory drug screening to make sure no one was reverting to their old habits.

Another part of Budelmann's plan to focus on crime prevention efforts has been slower to take off.

During the campaign, Budelmann promised to get involved with schools to prevent crimes. Budelmann believed it was important to interact with children to help them make better decisions down the road to avoid drugs and other criminal activities.

Due to a staffing shortage, Budelmann said he had not been able to focus the needed resources to create a crime prevention and education program. Some of Budelmann's ideas included ADA's teaching a week-long curriculum about a legal topic or attending class discussions that would increase student participation.

Budelmann had originally planned to get involved with the schools in the fall, but said a more realistic deadline may not be until January.

With Budelmann moving up to replace Vargason, the loss of an ADA who moved closer to his family, and an investigator and a paralegal moving on to different jobs, Budelmann was left with four open positions. Add in an increase in the case load and everyone in the office was forced to pick up the extra work, Budelmann said.

“I am proud of the people here who got the job done,” Budelmann said. “Steve McCloud, our new investigator, jumped in with both feet and hit the ground running. I promoted a new administrative assistant who has done a great job of running the criminal case intake and a new ADA, Brian Bauersfeld, who has done a phenomenal job. Everyone in the office has just put their shoulder to the wheel and pushed.”

The increase of work also brought a new way of conducting business in the office.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher Valdina said Vargason was more active in each felony case, overseeing the court proceedings and any plea bargains while Budelmann is giving more power and responsibility to his staff.

“He empowers us to look at the cases and apply our knowledge,” Valdina said. “He pushes us to be more proactive and we get involved a lot earlier on with cases. We want to make sure that the things which need to be addressed immediately get taken care of so that we can be more proactive as opposed to reactive with the cases.”

Budelmann has managed to continue his work in the courtroom by finding a balance between the administrative work and the work needed to pursue a criminal case.

The balance has forced Budelmann to spend several late nights at the office, but the benefits have made the organization more available to the public, Chirco said.

“The difference between Budelmann and Vargason is like night and day,” Chirco said. “[Vargason] was never in court and [Budelmann] was always in court before and to his credit has remained in court. That's a pretty ambitious thing to accomplish I think. It does have its benefits because we have direct access to the attorney that will be making the decision.”

Budelmann is also trying to interact with residents to find out what they need.

“I go out into the community and try to hear what they think needs to change, what we need to do for them and how we can be more available,” Budelmann said. “We are upgrading our telephone line and our Web site to be more informative, and I even put in that clear glass window in the office.”

The clear glass window in the reception area illustrates the difference between Budelmann and Vargason, Chirco said.

Under Vargason, the window was frosted so no one could see into the office from the reception room. Vargason separated himself from the defense attorneys and was more reserved and closed off on a personal level than Budelmann, Chirco said.

Within weeks of being sworn in as DA, Budelmann replaced the glass with see-through glass, exposing the office to the outside world.

“Vargason was frosted glass because you couldn't see him, he was really tough to get to know,” Chirco said.

“(Budelmann) is a face-to-face kind of guy, and with him it's a much more open office.”

Staff writer Nate Robson can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 248 or nathan.robson@lee.net