DA defends Washington County’s community service program

By CHRISTINE HAINES
chaines@yourmvi.com

Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone is defending Washington County’s practice of substituting community service work in place of court costs, fines and other financial penalties in the criminal justice system.
The county was criticized last week by state Auditor General Tim DeFoor, who estimated that the county failed to collect more than $1.5 million from defendants over the past four years. Vittone said the defendants who participated in the community service program didn’t have the money to pay the costs to start with, and the county has been offering community service for nearly 30 years.
“Gov. Tom Ridge gave it an award back in the 90s,” Vittone said. “It’s expressly permitted under the law. Besides, they’re indigent. You’re not going to get anything.”
Vittone said DeFoor’s focus was on the apparent lack of hearings, specifically, the auditor general found no evidence “that the court followed the requirements of 9730(b) for default of payment. We did not see evidence that two separate hearings were held prior to applying community service adjustments prior to payment of fines, fees, costs and surcharges,” DeFoor stated last week.
Vittone said DeFoor used 28 cases over a four year period to extrapolate that the county failed to collect the $1.5 million without conducting proper hearings first. Vittone said that isn’t the case.
“Auditor General DeFoor’s conclusion that the process in Washington County is flawed and that a hearing in court is necessary is legally incorrect. By way of background, in 2012, when I first took office, I revised our bill of costs to insure that defendants who had the ability to pay did pay their fair share of costs associated with their criminal prosecution. Shortly thereafter, the Washington County Court of Common Pleas instituted a Local Rule of Criminal Procedure No. 711 which specifically permits criminal defendants to perform community work service in lieu of the payment of fees, fines and court costs,” Vittone said in his own release this week.
Under the Local Rule, community service may not take the place of paying restitution. It may be included with sentencing. Vittone said the Local Rule was published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin and adopted without objection.

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