Lake County District Attorney Paul Charas will resign from his position, a little more than a year into his four-year term, citing a chronic lack of funding that has made it difficult to prosecute cases.
Charas told OPB that the lack of resources inhibits his ability “to do my job ethically and morally.”
A sign outside Lakeview, the seat of Lake County, Oregon. The Lake County District Attorney announced he would resign due to the lack of resources his office possesses.
U.S. Forest Service
“It’s untenable down here in terms of what resources have been allocated to this office,” Charas said.
The Lake County District Attorney’s Office currently has a total annual budget of around $202,000. Charas said the vast majority of that goes toward employee expenses, not including his own, leaving very little to cover the actual cost of prosecuting crimes.
He’s also the only prosecutor in a county the size of New Jersey, with a population of around 8,000. Charas regularly juggles dozens of different cases at once, and said that made the job personally difficult at times.
“There are multigenerational families that have been here since the 1800s,” he said. “It doesn’t take long to prosecute enough people to where you’ve pissed off half the county.”
His office only has $2,500 per year to spend on trials and witnesses, according to the annual budget. Charas said that equates to about $55 per case; he said he can’t afford to hire expert witnesses, which can hurt his ability to prosecute certain cases.
“It makes it difficult to do it properly,” he said. “We don’t have the resources to handle everything in-house.”
Since coming to office in January 2025, Charas has asked the Oregon Department of Justice to take on 10 cases, including homicides, because he doesn’t have the resources.
District attorneys receive their salaries from the Oregon Legislature, but county governments set their annual budgets. OPB reached out to Lake County Commissioners Mark Albertson and James Williams on Wednesday for details about the funding, but did not immediately receive a response.
Many district attorneys offices across the state have had to manage a lack of resources and prosecutors. In Central Oregon’s Jefferson County, the only candidate for district attorney was suspended in 2018 for lying to state investigators while in office. That county also has a backlog of cases, due to a lack of prosecutors.
Oregon has had a well-documented shortage of public defenders for years. But Union County District Attorney Kelsie McDaniel said there’s also a shortage of prosecutors in many counties — her office currently has two vacancies.
She also has experienced trying to prosecute cases on tiny budgets. Her budget for investigations was recently $2,000 for a whole year.
“You have one murder trial with expert witnesses, you’re going to suck through that in no time flat,” McDaniel said.
She said she hopes the Legislature can start providing special funding for district attorneys, in order to bolster their budgets and make salaries more competitive with urban markets.
Local governments throughout Lake County have felt budgetary constraints in recent years. The county is overwhelmingly made of public land, leaving a very small tax base. That, combined with the bankruptcy of the Ruby Pipeline, means local revenues have slowed to a trickle.
As a result, Lake County and the town of Lakeview have made cuts to local services. The town has reduced its staff by 74% to nine total employees, according to staff. 911 services have been outsourced to Klamath County, and the Lake County Sheriff’s Office has less than 10 deputies for the entire county.
Gov. Tina Kotek announced Wednesday that her office is accepting applications for those interested in replacing Charas as district attorney. Applications are due May 8.
Charas said he will remain in office until Aug. 4.
