All officers charged by law with collecting money in the name or for the use of the State shall report in writing under oath to the respective district courts of their several counties, on the first day of each term, the amounts of money that have come to their hands since the last term of their respective courts aforesaid. They also constitute 'fees earned by' the county attorney for purposes of Article 3896. It does remove these funds from the statutory reach of the county auditor. Likewise, we believe that, although article 53.08 permits a county attorney to determine, within certain limitations, the purposes for which the funds may be expended, it does not convert them into non-public funds. Indeed, the statute specifies that the funds may be used 'only to defray the salaries and expenses of the prosecutor's office,' inarguably a public purpose.
Funds collected by a public agency and used for public purposes are clearly public funds.