In the electronic world we live in, the use of paper checks will ultimately become a thing of the past.

This will be a very good thing for community merchants who will have access to electronic funds almost as quickly as they do to "cash money," as it is often referred to here in the South.

While this is good news for local merchants, it's bad news for the District Attorney's Worthless Check Units. Our office collected more than 5,205 worthless checks last year and returned $446,791.36 to local merchants.

While we are extremely proud of these numbers, we also understand that the local merchants had to do without their money for the time it took to recover these funds. Our units do not charge the merchant (or individuals who use our units). All costs associated with the collection of a worthless check are charged to the check's writer. The merchant or individual receives the total amount of money the check was written for plus a $30 fee. The district attorney's office receives a fee that is used to fund the operation of the Worthless Check Unit and the district attorney's office in general.

Last year, the worthless check unit generated 35 percent of the office's budget. This money is used to pay the salaries of assistant district attorneys, investigators and victim services. It would be impossible to adequately do the work of the district attorney's office without this income. The Legislature provides the district attorney's office for the 19th Circuit with less than 25 percent of its operating budget.

This money is used to operate and staff offices in Autauga, Chilton and Elmore counties. If we were to operate on the funding provided by the Legislature, very few services would be provided to the citizens of the 19th Circuit. We would be operating with part-time assistant district attorneys and there would be no victim services available.

Local district attorneys in this state have been generating their own funding sources for as long as I can remember, and I've been a prosecutor for close to 20 years now. Currently, we are receiving 20 percent of our funding from federal grant funds which provide prosecutors and victim service officers in all three counties.

Grant funds are based on year-to-year appropriations, and all of these sources could be terminated in the next fiscal year depending on what Congress does. Another 10 percent of our budget comes from our Restitution and Court Costs Collection Unit. These funds represent unpaid victim restitution in criminal cases and unpaid court costs and fees. Our office along with other district attorneys' offices across the state will make a concentrated effort to increase collections of these funds which will benefit not only our office, but will help make whole the victims of crime and return money to the state General Fund for support of the court system.

The only problem with this program is that it increases the workload of the clerk's office, the sheriff's office and the district court judges. In the 19th Circuit, we will be losing employees in the clerk's office due to AOC budget cuts. The sheriff's offices in all three counties are understaffed and the district judges currently are having more trials than each one of them can handle in each county.

It is not a simple matter for me to say we will "increase collections" in the 19th Circuit and realistically expect it to be done without providing additional personnel to the clerk's office, sheriff's office and district judges office, which doesn't appear likely in this year's legislative budget.

So what is the answer? I honestly do not know. We will continue to work with the clerks, sheriffs and judges to generate funding for the system as well as the district attorneys office. We will continue to collect worthless checks for as long as we can. We will seek to increase legislative appropriations in the unlikely event our state funding crisis is ever resolved. We will be ever watchful for federal grant funds and, of course, we will continue to look for new and innovative ways to raise revenue for our offices.

But the question I have to ask is do the citizens of this state want their local prosecutors to be dependent on the tenuous funding sources I have discussed today. In some small circuits, where there are little or no local business, worthless check revenues do not exist. Most local district attorneys do not have someone to do grant applications, and thus no grant money comes their way. It frightens me to think how we could provide prosecutorial and victim services to the tri-county area if we depended solely on the Legislature.