BATON ROUGE - East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore faces a critical vote this weekend which he says will determine the future of criminal justice in the parish.

"Things are dangerous right now. We have youngsters that are committing very serious offenses and we need to pay strict attention to them and get to them much quicker than we are able to do right now," Moore said. 

He hopes to have his office fully funded by tax payers to the tune of around $24 million annually.

"We're operating on a 1970s budget in 2025," Moore said. "We are chronically underfunded and understaffed and we are the biggest parish in Louisiana."

Currently, the EBR DA's office has a budget of around $16 million, which is $8 million less than smaller Jefferson Parish.

"In Jefferson in particular...they handled 18 homicides last year, and our office inherited 105 and our backlog is 250. It's hard to get to when you have insufficient staff."

In order to sufficiently staff the office, Moore is looking to hire around 15 additional prosecutors to help with the case backlog.

An additional four mills over the next 20 years will average out to about $4.50 a month per household.

"My goal is to at least show the public the backlog reduction and get cases moving quicker, while at the same time, our hope is we can continue with the downward decline of homicides which will stop that flow, let me catch up with the murder cases and get to cases quicker."

Moore says, though he is confident the tax will pass, if it does not, it wont just be back to business as usual.

"If it does not, I have a feeling that I will lose more senior staff to other agencies that are in the criminal justice business."

If the tax passes, the DA's office will no longer need money out of the city-parish budget, which means around $9 million will be freed up for other criminal justice initiatives.

The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, May 3.