Dane County Chief Judge William Foust is warning county leaders against imposing cost-cutting mandates that restrict judges' options for sentencing.

Foust issued a scathing response Friday to County Executive Kathleen Falk's 2009 budget proposal, which withholds certain staff funding unless the judges sentence a certain number of criminals to community service.

"We have grave concerns with your mandate that the judiciary will' or shall' do certain things," Foust wrote. "Just as we would not submit to a mandate that some set number of defendants will receive the maximum possible sentence, we cannot agree with you that some set number of defendants should repay their debt to society via community service."

Falk's budget calls for the clerk of courts to create a community service program by March 1 and have 45 lawbreakers enrolled by May 1.

Falk is also requiring the judges to hold weekend arraignment court on six holiday weekends, so as to prevent the sheriff from having to send inmates for costly stays in other counties on those weekends.

If the judges don't comply with the two directives, Falk and the County Board would withhold funding for four courthouse staff lawyers.

Judges are also unhappy with a county program to bail out indigent inmates with taxpayer dollars. Like the community service proposal, the bail program is intended to reduce crowding in the jail without the expense of building more cells or boarding inmates in other counties.

The court will work cooperatively to come up with solutions, Foust wrote, "but it cannot be bought or threatened."

"I will not play politics with judicial decision making," Foust wrote. "When we sentence a defendant we must be mindful of the nature of the offense, the character of the offender, and the need for the protection of the public, not whether our sentence will generate funding for staff."

Falk's spokesman Josh Wescott said she will review the letter, "but feels it's important for the county to continue to implement" recommendations from last year's criminal justice system analysis by the Berkeley, Calif.,-based Institute for Law and Policy Planning.

Falk used the same conditional-funding tactic in her 2008 budget to compel the judges and district attorney to make several changes that would speed the criminal justice process.

Those changes, as well as the community service program, weekend arraignment court and the tax-funded bail fund, were recommended in the study.

Rules were changed

Wisconsin law allows judges to sentence inmates to community service, except in serious felony cases. People convicted of misdemeanors could be eligible, as could those guilty of felonies such as burglary and drunken driving, while more violent felons could not.

In practice, community service is not common because courts don't have the money to hire staff to operate such a program, Dane County Clerk of Courts Carlo Esqueda said.

Electronic bracelets

The Legislature changed the rules last session so that inmates could earn a day off their jail sentence by serving as few as eight hours of community service. The past rule set 24 hours of community service -- three days of work -- as equivalent to one day in jail.

It's up to county boards to set the number of community hours within that range.

Esqueda proposed in August using the staff that run the court's electronic monitoring program to start a community service program. Both the court and the Sheriff's Office run electronic monitoring programs although the court-operated program uses less-sophisticated technology that doesn't monitor participants as closely.

In the last year, Sheriff Dave Mahoney has tripled the number serving time at home with electronic bracelets to more than 150. Esqueda has seen a parallel reduction in the number of people sentenced to the court's electronic monitoring program from 42 in April to 18 on Oct. 1. The court program can handle a maximum of 45 people.

Though he's prepared to start a community service program, Esqueda still has questions about how to pay for it. The electronic monitoring program generates $171,000 in revenue, because inmates are charged to use the bracelets. Doing away with that program would reduce his department revenues, even though it could save money in the sheriff's jail budget.