It was news in 2021 when the Pima County Attorneyβs Office lost dozens of employees, hobbling the agency during Laura Conoverβs first year in charge.
There was hope then that timeβs passage, new hires, and a pay increase would change the trend. It hasnβt turned out that way.
Turnover and vacancies remain an intractable problem in 2024 as Conover runs for re-election. The Pima County Attorneyβs Office has 77 vacancies, according to a June 16 Pima County report, 32 of them open more than a year. The vacancy rate is 19.9 %, one of the higher rates among the departments of the broadly understaffed county government.
Critics and observers of the office point to a variety of impacts. They say plea deals are sometimes made in haste due to the volume of cases, victims sometimes treated inadequately, and more felony domestic violence cases are being sent to city prosecutorsβ offices as misdemeanors.
When I spoke with her Friday, Conover said sheβs being criticized unfairly by people who are making up facts to fit their narrative. Indeed, there was one egregious example β the Goldwater Instituteβs May 1 op-ed in the Star claiming that crime is skyrocketing in Pima County. The data used in that op-ed was wrong, as pointed out in a May 19 editorial, and the opposite is closer to true than the posited crime wave.
βWeβre doing all the work weβre supposed to be doing,β Conover told me. βThe county is budgeting us for 5,000 felony convictions a year. Itβs our job to prioritize violent crime, victim crime. The results are freaking fantastic.β
Indeed, one of Conoverβs best arguments for re-election is that, despite the social disorder we see regularly in Tucson, reports of the most serious crimes, like homicide, have decreased sharply from their frightening peaks in 2021.
But if the department is so successful, why is turnover so persistent?
Surprising departures
Among the departures of 2021-22, a few were surprising because they were Conoverβs top advisers. One was Tamara Mulembo, who had left the Federal Public Defenderβs Office to become Conoverβs chief of staff.
She only lasted about 10 months and left with a relatively scathing internal email about Conover, her old friend. She accused Conover of tokenizing her as a black woman and subjecting her to microaggressions.
When I had lunch with Mulembo recently, I hoped she might shed more light on the flight from the office that she witnessed before joining the flow herself. But sheβd signed a non-disparagement agreement when she left the Pima County Attorneyβs Office. She limited herself to talking about generalities β and the candidate she favors.
βIt doesnβt matter what kind of change you try to implement, the culture of a place will win out every time,β said Mulembo, who was an intern at the county attorneyβs office while in law school, years before returning in 2021. βThe only way to change that is to consistently have that culture change, shepherded and modeled from the top down.β
Mulembo is supporting Mike Jette, whom she says she grew to respect when she was a public defender facing him as a prosecutor. She sat in the front row Monday night at a candidate forum in the Donna Liggins Center.
βYou donβt know how somebody uses power until you give it to him, right?β Mulembo said. βAnd so I had the opportunity to see him in action, using power responsibly and fairly and with integrity for nearly two decades.β
Another early associate who left was Joe Watson, a former journalist and former prisoner who became Conoverβs spokesman. Heβs supporting Conover, arguing that Jetteβs candidacy represents a return to the past and a departure from Conoverβs criminal-justice-reform initiatives.
Many of the high-ranking officials from former Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWallβs administration are supporting Jette and have criticized Conover regularly in the pages of the Star and elsewhere.
βI support Laura for the same reason I supported her in 2020,β Watson said. βI am very happy to see that we have two candidates who talk about their commitment to reform, but itβs only Laura whoβs worked on it, and she worked on it long before she became county attorney.β
As to the flight from the office, Watson said βI think itβs great that we have a leaner office.β
βPublic safety has not suffered as a result. Crime rates are down.β
LaWall had turnover too
In the early months of Conoverβs tenure, when she lost many employees, she blamed the shakeout on allies of the former administration. As time went on, though, the turnover continued, at a fluctuating pace.
On Friday she noted that turnover was also a big problem during LaWallβs administration. It was: In 2011, for example, LaWall acknowledged that the percentage of attorneys with more than five yearsβ experience had dropped from 61 percent in 2008 to 38 percent in 2011.
Conover has made a point during campaign appearances, such as Monday nightβs forum, to note that she got from the Pima County Board of Supervisors the first across-the-board raise for county attorneyβs office employees since 1997.
But she said in the interview that it still hasnβt been sufficient to keep attorneys from entertaining job offers from private firms or even other agencies. Money and burnout have explained most of the attorneysβ departures, she asserted.
βThis is a multi-decade problem,β Conover said. The county attorneyβs office is βalways going to be a feeder for the U.S. Attorneyβs office.β
Jette, who has made his 17 years of experience as a prosecutor a main selling point, blamed Conover, though.
βI do think itβs the personality whoβs in charge,β he said. βYou have people leaving in year 1, year 2 and year 3. You canβt say these are people (leaving) because they are from the previous administration.β
No guarantees
The attorneys Iβve reached out to, those who left in the second and third years of the administration, have been hesitant to speak on the record about their reasons for leaving. Most will have to work with each other in the countyβs criminal-justice system when the election is over and some worry about taking a side.
The pattern I see is a broad one reflected by both Conover and Jette in their comments. Yes, people are leaving because they can find better-paid, less arduous work elsewhere. Yes, burnout from high caseloads is taking a toll β meaning more vacancies lead to more people leaving.
But the departures also reflect some dissatisfaction with leadership β either with Conover herself or with the sometimes inexperienced supervisors whom employees report to as the turnover churns.
Whether Jette would hold on to more employees, I canβt really say. He has the advantage of being a career prosecutor, which may be attractive to people who want to work in the county attorneyβs office. But his supervisorial experience is limited.
He has supervised attorneys for the Santa Cruz County Attorney's Office and the Arizona Attorney General's office, and most interestingly when he worked abroad for the U.S. Justice Department, in Pakistan and other countries, training attorneys and working in the embassy.Β
Thereβs no guarantee caseloads for prosecutors or other turnover pressures will go down with either of them in office.
