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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