There are currently four assistant public defenders in each felony court handling about 100 cases apiece, and the guidelines call for a maximum of 75 cases each. The state public defender is also instituting a new case management system that will require additional support staff.
“The threat that comes along with it, if you don’t do it then you won’t receive the reimbursement, because it’s a reimbursement and not direct funding,” Public Defender Board Chairman Jack Grove said. “We need to be compliant in order to achieve that level of reimbursement, which forces us to really spike the budget and hire additional people to fulfill their expectations.”
Grove told the Journal-News the support staff additions were not requested only because of the case management system, because at this point the office isn’t sure of the real impact until the system is in place. He said the office only has two secretaries, so the assistant public defenders often have to do their own paperwork or have staff at their private law offices handle it.
The new hires will add $602,847 to the budget next year for a total of $2.7 million. The assistant public defenders will be paid $28,852 per year, and support staff will be paid $18,139 per year. The state’s reimbursement rate is supposed to double to 90 percent next July. Gov. Mike DeWine and the general assembly added $154 million to the biennium budget this summer, $59 million this fiscal year and $95 million through 2021. The county’s share is around $1.25 million over two years.
While the state budget negotiations were happening, Ohio Public Defender Tim Young told the Journal-News there are nine counties that haven’t changed their appointed counsel rates since the 1980s and the system is $40 million underfunded.
“You’ve got public defenders earning 20, 30 percent less than the prosecutors in the exact same county, same years of service, same experience, those kinds of things are going to change I would expect,” Young said. “I would expect a number of counties will take this opportunity to improve the system issues that have languished so long when the state wasn’t doing its share.”
Adding that many people will also require more space. Weisbrod told the commissioners he has had conversations with Job and Family Services Executive Director Bill Morrison about expanding into the JFS space on the eighth floor of the Government Services Center that is being used for storage.
Weisbrod said the county would be reimbursed for adding office space, to which Commissioner Don Dixon replied, “Until the state stops sending us money, we all know how that works.”
Grove said although the reimbursement percentages for indigent defense haven’t seen large changes, fickle state funding does concern him.
“So what happens six years from now, OK there’s a shift, there’s this bureaucracy that’s been established to comply and now we have to struggle to find the money to balance it,” he told the commissioners. “It is on my mind. That’s the frustration that I have because I know what happened with the withdrawal of state funding for local governments years ago.”
There are other new hire requests in the budget submissions. Sheriff Richard Jones is looking to add people in his $40 million budget, including 11 corrections officers, school resource officers and deputies for the electronic monitoring program. The commissioners didn’t indicate whether the new hires would be approved during the hearing. Butler County Administrator Judi Boyko said growth does precipitate the need for additional staffing and she’ll be working with commissioners to figure out what the county can afford.
“Once I’m clear from the commissioners on what percent increase is acceptable I will work with the finance director and the offices and departments to stay within that range,” Boyko said of all the budget requests that are outside guidelines.
Commissioners Cindy Carpenter and T.C. Rogers told the Journal-News they support the public defenders office request.
“It’s pretty much mandated so they are going to cover it, what we do down the road we’ll just have to deal with it,” Rogers said. “They made a mandate for a certain number of cases per attorney, but from my conversations with the CCAO (County Commissioners Association of Ohio) I think there is a new initiative on taking care of those people who can’t afford to be represented.”
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