BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's office is headed back to the drawing board after voters rejected a property tax proposal Saturday that would have brought in $24M per year for the department.

"This was the only option that we had. We're operating at a deficit of people and money and have been so for a long time," District Attorney Hillar Moore said.

With cuts coming to the city-parish budget, Moore and his office went before voters asking for four mills to help his office operate more efficiently and retain attorneys. Moore says the goal was to put the DA's office on par for funding with parishes like Orleans and Jefferson, which have smaller populations than East Baton Rouge.

The DA's office currently operates on a budget of around $16M, with around $8.7M of that being contributed by the city-parish.

On Saturday, 60 percent of voters said no to the proposal. Moore says he's worried that he could continue losing his most seasoned employees because of this.

"There's no doubt. I've lost a lot of very senior assistant district attorneys, analysts and investigators. I fear again Monday that I will lose more, or begin to lose more," Moore said

Moore says he's going to have to tell his existing employees they won't be given a raise for the second or third year now. Despite this, he promises his team is getting back to work Monday with the same drive as before and says this millage could go back on a ballot at a later time.

"It can always pop up on another ballot or there's other ways. I know the mayor is trying to find additional money through other measures. The mayor knows. He's been to our office and he's seen our fight," Moore said.

Moore will be working with the Mayor-President Sid Edwards and the Metro Council on their next move.

"We've got to No. 1: make sure that the DA's office is funded. It's a Constitutional office, so it will be funded for the time being, for the foreseeable future out of the city-parish budget," Dist. 3 Councilman Rowdy Gaudet said.

Gaudet says they plan to look at what options they have to bring in additional funding for the DA's office or find a different way to allocate money.

"There are several parish-wide Constitutional offices that aren't funded that way. They aren't funded parish wide so we're going to have to look at what that means, how are we as a government now that we've got five incorporated municipalities," Gaudet said.