Hiring freezes and sequestration budget cuts are putting the squeeze on one of the government’s most efficient money-making operations, New York’s top federal prosecutor warned Monday.
“Should we downsize the most successful criminal asset forfeiture program in the country, that added over $3 billion to the country’s coffers in 2012?” US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a speech to the New York County Lawyers’ Association.
As an example, Bharara trumpeted a recent plea deal with crooked hedge fund SAC Capital that will lead to a $1.2 billion payment — 24 times his office’s annual budget of about $50 million.
But he’s worried about how he’ll be able to keep up that profitable pace in the face of a hiring freeze, and cuts of $5.7 million to his office’s budget for fiscal year 2013 — an 11 percent drop from 2012.
“By January 2015, a quarter of our office’s allotted prosecutor positions will be vacant for lack of funding,” Bharara said.
The ambitious prosecutor said his office has also been left “outnumbered and out-spent” in the face of gang violence, drug warfare and terrorist threats — putting the nation’s security at risk.
“Justice cannot be done on the cheap, and public safety does not come free,” Bharara said.
“And the impact of a prolonged hiring freeze and continuing budget cuts could ultimately work irrevocable harm to the fundamental mission of my office — which is to keep our homeland secure, our streets safe, our markets fair and our government honest.
“Important cases will take longer to make and opportunities to pursue potentially fruitful, but labor-intensive, investigations will be foregone,” he said.
Despite what he calls a “lack of logic of such across-the-board cuts,” prosecutors are not throwing in the towel.
“I continue to believe that while my people are often outnumbered and outspent, we are not outmatched,” Bharara said. “But there are limits to how far I can stretch even the most dedicated and hard-working public servants.”