Marin DA faces management check amid workplace turmoil – Marin Impartial Journal

Marin District Lawyer Lori Frugoli is strolling right into a second time period with out going through opposition to her reelection, however she is going through a severe problem on the subject of main her workplace.

District lawyer’s workplaces might be political snake pits. Marin’s has had inner-office struggles, although most likely fewer and decrease profile than these seen in different counties.

Frugoli has a problem on her fingers now; not from a political foe, however simply as vital, she faces the problem of sustaining a well-functioning workplace of top-notch prosecutors.

Over her first time period, proficient deputies have left Marin for different jobs and alternatives. The mix of being short-handed and the pandemic has led to complaints about delays and the size of time prosecutors are taking in dealing with a case.

One native protection lawyer referred to as the dilemma “an ideal storm.”

If these complaints are correct to the purpose that backlogs are affecting defendants’ Sixth Modification proper to a good and speedy trial, Marin’s bench must publicly elevate that concern with Frugoli and the Board of Supervisors.

Frugoli maintains that her workplace’s staffing downside is because of different companies competing for proficient legal professionals. She wants to handle that problem and work out whether or not it’s a matter of pay and advantages, workload, skilled alternatives, housing and commuting or work atmosphere.

All of them might be at play, however there’s room for motion. It takes management, each throughout the workplace and outdoors.

Frugoli, a long-term veteran Marin prosecutor when she was elected to the job in 2018, ought to know when that workplace is working effectively, the way in which it ought to. She’s additionally seen turnover within the ranks of the workplace’s attorneys. Though Marin’s workplace has had a powerful basis of veteran prosecutors, it’s not unusual for some to go away for different alternatives.

Frugoli says she is engaged on filling 5 vacancies in her group of 30 prosecutors. This 12 months, seven prosecutors left the Marin workplace, in accordance with the county’s employment division.

What makes Frugoli’s management problem even more durable is that she can be going through discrimination lawsuits from two former staff. One of many lawsuits seeks as much as $18 million on the whole and punitive damages.

One of many lawsuits was filed by a former investigator, a five-year veteran, who complained that she and others confronted gender discrimination due to Frugoli’s workplace’s alleged “broadly recognized bias” in opposition to working moms or pregnant staffers.

That’s troubling, even the notion of such discrimination.

Frugoli says she’s taken the criticism “critically” and “speedy remedial motion” was taken, however is obscure on particulars as a result of it’s a confidential personnel matter.

As well as, the plaintiff’s lawyer has additionally filed a short in federal courtroom, difficult the county’s bid to have the courtroom elevate a 1980 consent decree ordering Marin to extend its variety of feminine employees.

Add to that, the controversies Frugoli’s workplace has needed to cope with – together with complaints that county prosecutors didn’t file “hate crime” expenses in opposition to a person videotaped posting antisemitic stickers in Fairfax, to her extended deliberation within the vandalism expenses in opposition to 5 suspects concerned within the 2020 protest the place the statue of Father Junipero Serra in entrance of Mission San Rafael was splattered with crimson paint and toppled.