Project ORCA was supposed to be almost over by now. But instead, more than 200 people hired to deal with Fulton County’s massive court case backlog are likely to keep their jobs for another year or two — perhaps permanently.
Fulton County built up a record backlog of civil and criminal cases during early COVID-19 lockdowns that shuttered the courts. In December 2020, it reached 149,200 cases, the biggest backlog in the state. Eighteen months later, in June 2022, that number had reportedly risen to 206,000 cases.
Some inmates remained stuck in the Fulton County jail throughout COVID lockdowns, waiting for their cases to be dealt with, said Alton Adams, county chief operating officer for Justice, Public Safety & Technology. The backlog also stalled some business, as civil complaints couldn’t be resolved, he said.
That led Fulton County commissioners to allocate $75 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act toward backlog reduction. It was the county’s largest single use of ARPA funds. Adams dubbed the reduction effort Project ORCA, the whale reference relating to the backlog’s huge size.
The county planned to put about 300 people to work on the backlog: magistrates, lawyers, clerks, senior part-time judges and interpreters. Those are mostly full-time temporary positions with benefits. The county has had trouble keeping some jobs filled, so only about 250 people were usually working at any given time, Adams said.
The county initially expected to spend all the allocated ARPA funds by the end of this year. But the project didn’t spend quite as much as expected, and the need continued. So ORCA was extended to October 2024, with the expectation that new hiring would stop last month and the number employed would gradually decline from there, Adams said.
Driven primarily by a request from the district attorney’s office, commissioners directed county staff to continue hiring people for open positions, he said.
Funding for current positions is expected to run out in July, if all 236 current jobs are extended until then. That means the county would need $9 million more in next year’s budget, and $23 million more in 2025 to keep those people on the payroll permanently.
Originally the county authorized hiring for 294 positions, but all those jobs have never been filled at once, Adams said. If that many jobs are actually filled, it would cost $13 million in the 2024 budget and $28 million in 2025.
Hiring continues based on the assertion that the justice system — the solicitor general, district attorney and judges — has been underfunded for years, Adams said. Even in 2019 Fulton County was well below state benchmarks for timely case clearance, he said.
“We had a backlog pre-COVID,” Adams said. If momentum drops off, a new backlog will arise, he said.
Meanwhile more of the cases reaching the courts are complicated and involve serious crimes than pre-pandemic, Adams said.
According to the county’s online progress tracker, the backlog was down to 33,126 cases as of Oct. 29, including open cases filed since Project ORCA began.
Future hiring should be done “thoughtfully,” not necessarily keeping every new job in every part of the court system, but identifying those that are most needed, Adams said.
But commissioners’ direction to continue hiring didn’t include deciding from where the money would come, he said.
“That’s the question that the county manager and the chairman asked the rest of the board,” Adams said. How to pay for it will be part of upcoming budget discussion.
County staff recommended a higher property tax rate, and based initial budget projections on the revenue that would bring in. But although Fulton County has big expected expenses next year — managing an overcrowded and deteriorating jail, filling the “health care desert” left by the closure of two hospitals, overseeing a major election cycle and raising employee pay — county commissioners left the tax rate unchanged.
That means a major shortfall of $325 million between expected revenue and initial budget requests. For perspective, the county’s General Fund budget for 2023 was $850 million.
County departments are being asked to trim their requests and finance staff are looking for other ways to cut the budget ahead of its formal adoption in early January.
About the Author
