There are a lot sexier issues before the General Assembly -- the gas tax, the fight to raise the minimum wage, salary increases for state employees -- but none is more critical to North Carolina than Gov. Mike Easley's $48 million "Secure Communities" initiative.

It's the type of legislation rarely seen from this governor. It's practically pander-free. There's no earmark for sensitivity training for cops, no tax credits for home burglar alarms, not even a Spanish-language outreach program. Instead, the proposal provides nuts-and-bolts funding desperately needed by the judiciary, the branch of government that has been allowed to atrophy to the point of neglect.

Here's how bad things have gotten. Indigent perps have more legal resources available to them than the average North Carolina crime victim. Going into the legislature's short session, the state's Indigent Defense Services (IDS) is funded to the tune of $97 million, while the state's 39 district attorney offices receive only $63 million. The disparity is even starker considering that IDS handles only 40 percent of the state's criminal cases. The DAs are stuck with every single one of them.

That's why the best part of the governor's proposal is the addition of 90 assistant district attorneys (ADAs). It's a good start, but in order to reach the national average of one prosecutor for every 10,000 citizens, North Carolina needs 276 on top of the 90.

If reaching the national average is so critical for the state's teachers, how can it be any less important for those whose job it is to put away the criminals among us?

Such logic rarely wins the day in the General Assembly, so here's a proposition all legislators can understand. Those who want bona fide law-and-order street cred going into the November elections should top the governor and align themselves with the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys. It requested 120 ADAs, because the severe prosecutor shortage is putting a real crimp on justice.

"High-profile and serious crimes, like murder, get the attention they deserve," said Branson "Branny" Vickory, district attorney for Lenoir, Greene and Wayne counties. "It's the street crimes -- break-ins, drug violations, theft -- that tend to get pushed through the system."

"Pushed through" means these cases get short shrift. With many nonviolent crimes, processing has become more important than prosecuting. But it's exactly this type of case that victimizes most North Carolinians.

Having the General Assembly approve 90 more ADAs is a big step toward swinging the pendulum back in favor of the good guys, but hiring them doesn't mean keeping them.

The only disappointment in the governor's otherwise responsible initiative is the absence of a pay increase for starting prosecutors. At $32,885, it's the lowest paid attorney job in state government. A lot of folks would love to start out at $33 K, but few other professions require a six-figure up-front education investment. These days, law school grads can leave school with $100,000 in student loans.

"It's sort of like having a house payment without the house," Vickory told me of the financial quandary facing newly hatched ADAs. And so, instead of burning the midnight oil on a case, some of them pick up second, non-legal, jobs to pay the bills. Vickory tells of one instance in which a teacher traded the classroom for the courtroom, but eventually returned to education because it proved a better financial option.

The teacher-turned-prosecutor-turned teacher case is rare. More typical is this: the turnover clock begins ticking in earnest once an ADA wants to get married, start a family and get a house.

With the state flush with a surplus of $2 billion or so, now is the perfect time for the General Assembly to improve the Secure Communities initiative and increase starting salaries for prosecutors.

Easley deserves congratulations for carving out $48 million more for the judiciary. But the hoopla that surrounded his announcement was also a political indictment, particularly for a former prosecutor. Throwing the judiciary a financial bone to try and catch up with explosive population growth should not have been treated as a special occasion. Fully funding the judiciary is a core expectation of state government, not a reason for celebration.