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Worthy: Wayne County budget woes slowing down Bashara case
6:06 PM, March 27, 2013
By Elisha Anderson
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 talked to the Wayne County commissioners at their offices in the Guardian Building in downtown Detroit. / Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy told county commissioners Tuesday that budget woes are affecting her office’s ability to handle its growing workload and slowing down high-profile cases like the death of Jane Bashara.
“In any other office we would have been done probably already,” Worthy said of the Bashara case, adding that her office has had to pull resources away from the case to handle other matters.
Former handyman Joseph Gentz pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for Bashara’s death. Her husband, Bob Bashara, maintains his innocence but was named a person of interest by police and is serving time for trying to hire a hit man to kill Gentz in jail.
Worthy told the committee on public safety that her office has already made changes to operate more efficiently, but her general fund budget—$25.6-million this year— doesn’t allow for enough people to get all the work done in a timely way.
That budget is down from $31.7 million the previous fiscal year and roughly $8.5 million less than she was promised in a memo of understanding three years ago.
County Executive Robert Ficano has said the county lost about $100 million in property tax revenue since 2009 and the budget for the Prosecutor’s Office is a matter of numbers.
