(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is asking legislators for a more than one-point-six MILLION dollar budget boost so she can hire seven more attorneys. Over 300-thousand dollars would fund one prosecutor to investigate financial crimes.  “We’ve found a lot of localities have some questions about the types of cases of that would involve financial crimes and other types of cases of that nature,” Bird says, “and it would really help to have a dedicated prosecutor for financial crimes and other types of consumer scams should the perpetrator be able to be located.” Bird is asking for another 825-thousand dollars to add four more full-time staff attorneys in her office.

“Over time the civil division in our office has been dwindling, losing attormeys at a time when the case level has either increased or stayed constant,” Bird says. “These are the attorneys who defend the state when the state is sued and so it’s very important that we have enough attorneys so they don’t have to be settled if they’re not a case with merit.” Bird says it’s far more expensive to pay private attorneys to handle these types of cases, many of them from people trying to get a criminal conviction overturned. And half a million would go to hiring two attorneys and a paralegal to primarily deal with high profile lawsuits seeking to overturn state laws.

“That part of our office has been kept very, very busy with a number of lawsuits and other cases against state laws,” Bird says. If the legislature approves this part of Bird’s budget request, Bird would have these three staffers help with consumer protection cases her office handles.