Dissatisfaction with working conditions and poor pay has prompted an exodus of prosecutors from the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office, according to a lawyer who has been involved in labor negotiations for the group.
Prosecutor Nolan Weber said that by the end of June, he and five others will have voluntarily left the district attorney’s office for greener pastures.
That will soon leave just 16 lawyers in place at the county’s top prosecutorial agency that would have 28 attorneys if at full capacity. That means fewer prosecutors to handle major crimes involving serious offenses including sex crime and drug trafficking, Weber said.
“Our pay is not competitive. Our benefits are not competitive,” Weber said. “This is a level which is unmanageable, is untenable and it’s going to ultimately spell something not great for victims of crime.”
Echoing those concerns, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced late Friday that “unprecedented staffing shortages” have forced the district attorney’s office to temporarily cut the number of cases it is able to file.
“We simply do not have the number of prosecutors required to keep pace with the volume of cases being referred,” Bridgett said.
“This is not a philosophical shift; it is a math problem,” said Bridgett in the statement emailed late Friday, May 8. “Until staffing stabilizes, we must focus our limited resources on the most serious and dangerous offenders.”
She said that three prosecutors are handling administrative duties and post-conviction work, leaving the district attorney’s office with only 64% of its positions filled.
Bridgett’s statement said the office will prioritize cases involving significant public safety threats including violent crimes, sex crimes, physical and sexual abuse of children, domestic violence, elder abuse and DUIs. Less serious cases will be “delayed or placed in backlog status” until staffing levels improve, the district attorney’s office said.
According to Weber, that means “investigative agencies are going to be referring cases, but they’re just not going to be reviewed…or they’re just going to basically remain in queue waiting to be reviewed because there aren’t enough people.”
Weber said he will soon leave Shasta County to join the Butte County District Attorney’s office. He said other former Shasta County prosecutors have in the recent past landed new positions with the Redding City Attorney’s office, on the Shasta County Public Defender’s staff and with a private law firm in Sacramento.
After they all go, a total of nine prosecutors will have departed from the district attorney’s office during the past 15 months, he said. There are also five longstanding vacancies in the department already, the district attorney’s office said.
Money, staffing longtime issues in Shasta County District Attorney’s Office
The issue of staffing in the district attorney’s office has long been a sore point.
During a March 2025 summit, top legal officials told the Shasta County Board of Supervisors that more deputy district attorneys and support staff were needed as part of a broader strategy to improve community public safety.
Board Chair Kevin Crye had called two public sessions to identify public safety”gaps” and possible solutions.
In her address to the board about her department’s needs, Bridgett told supervisors: “We do really good work. We have a lot of successes but … we are very much overworked and that has to change.”
Weber said that low salaries hinder efforts to hire and retain prosecutors in Shasta County and winning higher pay for deputy district attorneys was a major goal in the United Public Employees of California labor union’s negotiations with the county last year.
Nolan said entry-level prosecutors in Shasta County currently earn $88,400 a year, compared to a starting salary of about $136,000 in Sacramento and about $127,000 across the state last year.
With more local prosecutors, he said, “you would have more cases timely filed” and victims’ testimonies would be heard more quickly. Also, Nolan said, “You would have cases more aggressively prosecuted because there’s more time; we don’t have to make deals at the 11th hour because there’s not enough people.”
But even if every prosecutor job in the district attorney’s office was filled, that would still fall short of the overall need, agency officials told supervisors last year.
Having 35 district attorneys in Shasta County would be more “appropriate,” based on the average number of district attorneys working in other communities, Weber said when union negotiations with the county were happening last year.
Workloads were also a complaint, since Shasta County’s prosecutors handle more cases than prosecutors in some larger communities, officials told supervisors.
There were 2,271 felony court filings in Shasta County in 2024, according to statistics the district attorney’s office presented to the board during the public safety summit.
During the same period, Monterey County reported 2,186 felony court filings and had 60 total prosecutor positions, according to Bridgett’s office. Santa Barbara County reported 2,294 felony filings and also had a total of 60 prosecutor positions, Bridgett’s office said.
Both those counties have more than double Shasta County’s population of 180,366. The Shasta district attorney’s office didn’t present the number of prosecutor vacancies in those two counties at that time.
Inflation and hefty law school debt often hurt recently-hired assistant district attorneys locally, prosecutors said, even though apartment rents and house prices in Shasta County are significantly more affordable than in either the Monterey or Santa Barbara areas.
Weber, who said he joined the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office just over six years ago, said on Friday that with Butte County, he will earn 43% more than he does in Shasta County. Butte County’s prosecutors are represented by Teamsters Local 137.
According to information compiled by public records database Transparent California, Weber earned base pay of $111,626 in 2024 and received salary and benefits worth $151,673.90 combined in Shasta County that year.
Michele Chandler covers public safety, reports on trials in Shasta County Superior Court, writes about restaurants and foodies and handles whatever else comes up for the Redding Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. Accepts story tips at 530-338-7753 and at mrchandler@gannett.com. Please support our entire newsroom’s commitment to public service journalism by subscribing today.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Shasta County DA’s Office faces prosecutor exodus over pay
Reporting by Michele Chandler, Redding Record Searchlight / Redding Record Searchlight
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
