Lawmakers appropriate $5.5M for public defense reform; unanimous vote is historic move
Legislative budget writers took a historic step this morning, voting unanimously in favor of spending $5.5 million next year to fund the Public Defense Commission and reform Idaho’s system of providing public defenders to defendants who can’t afford attorneys – a system that a state-commissioned study three years ago found to be constitutionally deficient, and that’s already faced a class-action lawsuit, though the case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
The appropriation funds HB 504, the reform legislation that’s already passed the House on a 68-2 vote and is awaiting a final vote in the Senate. It carries out the recommendations of a legislative interim committee that spent two years studying the issue.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, said, “I served on the interim committee, and it was a wonderful committee. We had two great chairs in Sen. Lakey and Rep. Perry. We had all kinds of different views when we went in there, and I think nearly everything in the bill is a compromise, and so is this budget.”
The budget bill calls for the Public Defense Commission to spend up to $4,266,500 next year on grants to counties for public defense to that complies with new standards. It also includes up to $550,000 for incentive grants of up to $25,000 per county for those that want to join with other counties to form regional public defense offices; and up to $250,000 for unexpected and extraordinary litigation costs, to be awarded to counties on a case-by-case basis. Finally, it includes $416,300 and the equivalent of 4.5 new positions to manage the new responsibilities of the commission laid out in HB 504. “So of the total $5.5 million, more than 92 percent of that would go directly to the counties,” said legislative budget analyst Jared Hoskins.
HB 504, Hoskins said, “Empowers the commission to promulgate administrative rules to create standards by which public defenders and counties are required to comply. It also empowers the commission to administer a grant program to provide state funds to the counties to offset the cost of compliance with those standards.”
JFAC approved the appropriation on a 19-0 vote; one member, Sen. Steven Thayn, R-Emmett, was absent. Of the $5,482,800 appropriation of state general funds, just $13,400 is one-time; the rest is ongoing, meaning it'll be an annual expenditure.
