A bureaucratic disagreement over who should prosecute hundreds of misdemeanor criminal cases generated by state law enforcement agencies could now result in a painful budget cut for the city prosecutor’s office.

Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm last year notified state Attorney General Anne Lopez he would no longer prosecute cases that result from arrests or tickets issued by state agencies. That change has forced Lopez’s staff to take responsibility for prosecuting some 1,100 new cases since last fall.

Then this month the House Finance Committee proposed cutting more than $1.4 million in state money for the city prosecutor’s office in what Alm said appears to be a reaction to that decision. The money in question is used to pay for city career criminal prosecution and victim-witness assistance programs.

Last week Alm’s chief of staff Paul Mow urged state senators to restore that funding for the prosecutor’s office, warning the proposed cuts will mean “fewer prosecutors for murders, assaults, robberies, burglaries, criminal property damage, habitual property crimes, firearms offenses and felony drug cases.”

The budget cut would also translate into fewer counselors for victims and witnesses in criminal cases to help them navigate criminal court proceedings, less funding for the Sex Abuse Treatment Center, and less funding for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers to provide grief counseling and other services, Mow said.

Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Donovan Dela Cruz then posed a pointed question to Mow: “If the state restores that funding, are you going to work it out with the Attorney General so that you don’t delegate work back to them?”

Mow attempted to explain why Alm opted to stop handling cases generated by state law enforcement agencies, but Dela Cruz interrupted. “The question is, are you going to take it back, or not?” Dela Cruz demanded.

“Well, no, but I’d like a chance to explain,” Mow replied.

Dela Cruz interrupted again, telling Mow, “We don’t need an explanation. All we ask is, are you going to take it back, or not?”

“Well, the answer is no. There’s a reason for it, if you want to hear it. I’d like an opportunity to say what the reason is,” Mow said.

But Dela Cruz ended the exchange there, and Mow left the table with a grimace.

On Wednesday Dela Cruz announced the committee’s draft of the state budget in House Bill 1800 does include nearly $2.46 million for career criminal and victim witness assistance programs, money that is to be administered by the Attorney General’s Office.

Alm said in an interview Wednesday that sum apparently includes the $1.4 million the city prosecutor’s office needs to fund those programs. But the House still has not publicly agreed to provide the funding, and House Finance Committee chair Kyle Yamashita did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The city-state controversy over the prosecutions began when Alm notified state law enforcement agencies in July that as of Oct. 1 his office would no longer prosecute new felonies, misdemeanors, petty misdemeanors or violations generated by state law enforcement agencies.

Those agencies include the state sheriff’s deputies, the state Narcotics Enforcement Division, and law enforcement officers with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Alm said his office had been handling those kinds of cases for the state since the 1990s, but explained in his letter that “current staffing realities dictate that the prosecution of these cases once again be handled by the Department of the Attorney General.”

He also said in an interview last week that deputies in the Attorney General’s Office work more closely with the state law enforcement agencies that enforce regulations dealing with fishing nets, for example.

“They are familiar with the statutes, they are familiar with the personnel, with the supervisors, and we are not,” Alm said. He added that “these really are state cases.”

Alm said the 1,100 cases amounts to only a small percentage of the 22,000 misdemeanor, petty misdemeanor and violation cases his deputies handled in District Court from October to March.

However, that shift in responsibility significantly increased the workload for the criminal justice division of the state Attorney General’s Office.

Lopez said in an interview Monday her office already handled most of the felonies, but provided data showing state law enforcement agencies have generated 1,093 new non-felony cases since Oct. 1 that now must be handled by the Attorney General’s Office.

Still, Lopez said her office has not dropped any cases or allowed them to be dismissed because of short staffing.

“We have not, and we will not,” she said.

She has asked lawmakers for $633,000 to hire five deputies and a paralegal to help with the extra workload.

Lopez said she is “not going to get into whose responsibility it is” to handle those cases, but added: “If you look at the statute, the Attorney General delegates work to the county prosecutors, and the county prosecutors prosecute crimes that occur in their counties.”

Lopez and Alm were both surprised at the possibility that the shift in who handles the low-level state criminal cases in District Court may affect state funding for the city’s career criminal prosecution unit or victim-witness services.

When asked if lawmakers are proposing to cut the $1.4 million in funding for Alm’s office because of Alm’s decision to shift the District Court prosecutions for state cases back to the state, Alm replied: “That would seem to be the only conclusion we can come to.”

“We were totally surprised, because this has nothing to do with that,” Alm said of the two issues. He noted there were no similar cuts imposed on the other counties’ programs.

Lopez remarked that “I will tell you the Legislature and WAM did not discuss that with me in advance, and I had no input into that.”

“Really, what the Legislature decides to do is in their purview, and I will be confident that we will pursue justice and we will always do the right thing,” she said. “However they determine to settle this issue, we will be good with it and work with it.”

Alm said his staff regularly works with the Attorney General’s Office on this issue and others, and “I don’t understand this action at the Legislature that should have nothing to do with it.”

“I would prefer that they let the AG and us work things out ourselves, and fund this important work that we want to do to go after the worst of the worst criminals, and to help victims,” he said.

House and Senate lawmakers will be negotiating in April over the new budget, so a final decision on state funding for the city prosecutor’s programs will be made sometime in the weeks ahead.