Staff Reports
February 25, 2008 10:26 pm
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MOULTRIE — The Senate adopted a mid-year budget Thursday that stripped $3.1 million from the still new state-wide public defenders system, rejecting the $3.6 million recommended by the governor and the House of Representatives and leaving just more than $500,000 in supplemental funds for the balance of the fiscal year, which ends on June 30.
Southern Circuit Public Defender J. Kent Edwards Sr., in his third term as treasurer for the Georgia Association of Circuit Public Defenders, said Monday in a press release that this move must have been in error.
“It is critical that the Senate conferees correct it or risk creating a dangerous rift between the state and local governing authorities,” Edwards said.
In 2004, committees of local attorneys, judges, court personnel and government representatives all over the State of Georgia selected circuit public defenders to develop and operate public defender offices set by law to open on Jan. 1, 2005. With only base staff and minimal direction from the state, circuit public defenders turned to their local governing authorities for help in supplementing staff and resources to a reasonable level in order to meet the constitutional and statutory mandates of providing effective and efficient indigent defense.
“The circuit public defenders succeeded and we were able to accomplish this feat because local governing authorities around the state contracted with public defender offices and agreed to fund and support necessary staff. These vital partnerships have been applauded time and again by legislators, judges, county commissioners and many others,” Edwards said. “Indeed, just this summer a legislative study committee met several times and reported that the circuit public defenders and their local partners were doing a great job. That assessment is exactly right.”
This partnership was forged by contract with the governing authorities agreeing to pay for needed services to be provided by the circuit public defender, to handle the massive case load in each judicial circuit, he said. By stripping state funds from the system, the state in effect seeks to take the counties’ contract funds to pay for the state’s obligation to the public defender system, he said.
“This cannot be the Senate’s intention and must be the result of a basic misunderstanding of the local partnership. Fortunately, the Senate conferees have the opportunity to correct this, and correct it they must,” he said. “In the Southern Judicial Circuit, which consists of Brooks, Colquitt, Echols, Lowndes and Thomas counties, our five separate county commissions took the wise and logical view of the indigent defense needs in our counties. These five counties recognized that our caseloads demand lawyers and support staff in addition to the total of nine funded by the state and worked in partnership with our office to supplement it.
“The county pays the state an administrative fee to support the county funded staff that is critical to the efficient operations of the courts. The centralization of this administration makes sense. Using those fees to pay for the state’s obligation does not. County funds should be used for the purpose for which the counties intended them,” he said.
The state pays for its portion of the public defender system through the Indigent Defense Fund, a collection of court fines and fees that are paid by users of the court system. Last year that fund collected nearly $44 million dollars state-wide. The Southern Circuit portion was substantial, but only $35 million of those user fees have been appropriated to the public defender system, Edwards said.
The county, on the other hand, has no such fund. When it agrees to support indigent defense costs, it is required to use tax dollars.
“Is it wise for the state to use local tax dollars in lieu of already collected user fees?” he posed. “The Senate conferees should understand that the $3.1 million stripped from the governor’s recommendation and the House appropriation is local money set aside for specific contractual purposes and that the Senate’s budget cut will undermine the very part of the new system that the study committee acknowledged was working well. The money must be restored.”
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