Coweta

County district attorney Pete Skandalakis walked away

from Tuesday morning's County Commission meeting a happy

man after the board approved his budget requests.

Skandalakis

appeared before the board to get his annual budget

approved. Unlike the county budget, which operates on a

regular calendar schedule, the district attorney's fiscal

year starts July 1.

His budget

is funded by the five counties in the judicial circuit;

Coweta, Carroll, Heard, Troup and Meriwether. This year,

Skandalakis sought a 22 percent raise in funds from the

Coweta County Commission to push the Coweta portion of

his budget from $154,000 to $188,000.

Skandalakis

explained the jump in funds was needed because he was in

dire need of another investigator for his office, along

with another assistant district attorney.

The

district attorney said the other counties in the circuit

had approved his budget and he was hoping the

commissioners would look kindly on his request.

Another

issue in this year's budget, Skandalakis said, was a

growing pay inequity for his assistant district

attorneys.

He

explained the assistant district attorneys are paid on

different systems; some are paid on the state system,

while some are paid through the multi-county judicial

district system.

Starting

this year, all assistant district attorneys will be paid

under the state system, which should eliminate some of

the pay gaps and keep some of the attorneys around

longer, he said.

When the

next budget year starts next July, Skandalakis is hopeful

he will have changed the way the counties in his circuit

fund his department.

Currently,

the budget goes according to population. Coweta County

has 32 percent of the population in the five counties, so

they pay for 32 percent of his budget.

Skandalakis

favors going to a case-load system of figuring out the

county's portion of the budget. While Coweta County may

have 32 percent of the population, it has only 23 percent

of the case load. The district attorney said case load is

a fairer way to assess the counties and he has already

"fired a warning shot across the bow" of Troup

County, which has the biggest case load of the five

counties.

Commissioner

Vernon "Mutt" Hunter praised the district

attorney's budget and emphasized that he wanted the

budget changed to a case load budget by next year.

Skandalakis

said he wants to get representatives of all five county

commissions together later in the year to have a

discussion on how his budget will be funded next year.

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