“At the end of the day, I feel like my office and public safety are a priority,” Mr. Taylor said.

But the decision by Mr. Taylor to respond to the budget cut by immediately refusing to prosecute misdemeanors in Topeka — though the cuts do not go into effect until next year — caught people off guard, especially given that he had written that the city “does not have the staff or infrastructure to provide victims of domestic violence with the level of service they have come to expect.”

But Mr. Taylor said the county “forced my hand.”

Shelly Buhler, chairwoman of the Shawnee County Commission, said she did not expect Mr. Taylor to actually go through with his threat to stop prosecuting domestic violence.

She said that all departments were asked to propose 10 percent cuts and that he asked for an increase. “We had hoped that he would not put that group of victims at risk, that he would find some other way to absorb the cuts,” she said.

Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said that around the country, prosecutors are being forced to prioritize certain types of cases, but that these decisions are rarely discussed in public.

“Usually no one comes out and says that starting today I’m not going to prosecute that crime, which sends a message of failure and tells the community you’re free to commit that crime,” he said.

The city, which had already completed its budget, would have to spend $1 million more to pay for the additional prosecutions, said Dan Stanley, the interim city manager. “Its wholly inappropriate for him to lay it at the lap of the county,” he said.

Under the current arrangement, the district attorney is still responsible for prosecuting misdemeanors in the rest of the county as well as all felony domestic violence cases. Almost half of the misdemeanors that were prosecuted last year — 423 cases — are domestic battery cases, and most of the rest are shoplifting, drugs and assault.