BATON ROUGE— Sixty percent of parish voters rejected the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's 20-year tax proposal Saturday.
The tax would have raised over $24 Million a year for the office.

Chief Deputy Defender Kyla Romanach said the public defender's office would’ve received a portion of the $8.7 million in the city-parish's general fund currently allocated to the DA's office.

Hillar Moore told WBRZ that since the proposition failed his office would still receive the full $8.7 million.

“The ultimate result is that we may not have adequate funding at all,” Romanach said.

Romanach said the office is funded by the city parish, the state, and "conviction user fees," but the money raised still leaves the office stretched thin.

“If the district attorney is struggling on a $16 Million budget and our total budget is under $6 Million, but we're representing 85 to 88 percent of the people – you can do the math and see why we would be struggling,” Romanach said.

Only 40 percent of parish voters supported the tax, with most support coming south of Florida Boulevard. However, in most of North Baton Rouge and all areas toward Central and Zachary, voters were against it. In the Glen Oaks precinct, 91 percent of residents rejected the tax.

Romanach said she understands why 60 percent of the parish could have voted against the proposal.

“We did not have a commitment on a particular amount of money from the general fund that would go to the public defender's office," Romanach said. "I think that impacted a segment of the community that refused to vote for the tax because they were concerned about it creating an unleveled playing field.”