51ºÚÁÏ

The former 51ºÚÁÏ County prosecutor was in the Jefferson City building that day to support a bill sponsored by Sen. Tim Green, a Democrat from Spanish Lake. The bill would have of prosecuting attorneys in Missouri by switching to a system tied to judicial circuits, rather than every county having its own prosecutor.

McCulloch thought the bill was a good idea. Missouri has 115 elected prosecutors — one for every county and the city of 51ºÚÁÏ. On the other hand, there are 46 judicial circuits in the state. This was a small government bill, Green remembers.

“I was one of those Democrats who actually thought, ‘Let’s cut the size of government,’� Green says.

He’s been out of office for more than a decade. I caught him on the phone Monday as he was going through a Lion’s Choice drive-thru for lunch.

“If you got one judge per circuit,� he said, “why shouldn’t you allow one prosecutor?�

Unfortunately, only a few prosecutors supported the bill. Most of the rural ones, some of whom stood to lose their jobs, opposed it.

I called Green because of a recent Missouri Court of Appeals ruling that said prosecutors perform a state function, not a county one. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by 51ºÚÁÏ County Executive Sam Page. When the former county prosecutor, Wesley Bell, was preparing to leave office and start serving as a congressman, Page, a Democrat, announced that he was going to appoint Bell’s replacement, as outlined in the county charter.

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, said state law gave him that right. A political and legal standoff ensued.

Having been through a similar process recently, in which St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, a Republican, appointed McCulloch’s brother, Joseph, as a prosecutor in that county, I figured Page had it right. The two counties have nearly identical charter language on the issue, and Parson didn’t lift a finger when Ehlmann exercised that power.

Circuit Court Judge Brian May and the appeals court decided that Parson , so his choice of Melissa Price Smith became the new 51ºÚÁÏ County prosecutor. The court likely did 51ºÚÁÏ County residents a favor. Smith has a significantly better prosecutor’s resume than Page’s more politically contrived pick of Cort VanOstran, a former congressional candidate.

But the ruling does two things outside of the appointment. It reduces the power of charter counties, and it establishes prosecutors as state officials, not county ones.

“The language of the Missouri Constitution and statutes lead this Court to the inescapable conclusion that the prosecuting attorney performs essential state governmental functions,� the appeals court wrote.

That’s what got me thinking about Green’s bill. A similar version of his bill was first introduced by longtime Democratic state Sen. Harold Caskey, a lawyer from Butler. Caskey’s brother was a county prosecutor. But starting in 2001, Caskey regularly introduced a bill that would turn Missouri’s county-based prosecuting attorney system into a state-centric district attorney system.

After Green left the Senate, Republican Bob Dixon of Springfield filed from 2014 through 2016.

Under most of the bills, the number of prosecuting attorneys in the state would have been cut in half. Their pay would have been the same as circuit judges and, like the judges, would be covered by the state budget. Counties would have been responsible for other employees in the district attorney’s office.

“I thought it was silly to have all these prosecutors when some of these rural counties don’t have much of a workload,� Green said.

The bills introduced by Green and Dixon passed the Senate Judiciary Committee but made no further progress.

Missouri currently has in the country except for Texas and Virginia. Four of Missouri’s border states elect prosecutors by state judicial district, and all have far fewer prosecutors than Missouri. Kentucky has 56, Tennessee has 31, Arkansas has 28 and Oklahoma has 27. Missouri also has significantly more prosecutors than border states that elect prosecutors by county. Even Illinois, with twice the population, has fewer elected prosecutors than Missouri.

Darrell Moore, executive director of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, says the idea of moving to a district attorney system divides prosecutors in rural and urban areas.

“In the last few years, we’ve been struggling with keeping prosecutors in small counties and we’ve been looking for solutions,� Moore says. “One solution would be to increase the salaries of the part-timers. The other solution would be to go to a district attorney system, which has been suggested in the past, because the state would assume part of the cost. Everybody needs to get together and look at the possibilities.�

So is there room for Green’s small-government solution to make a comeback?

“Everybody’s always for fiscal responsibility,� Green says, “until you want to cut their job.�