By CRAIG FREILICH

St. Lawrence County’s new public defender and his predecessor are still waiting for the state to pony up millions of dollars for the legal defense of poor people.

But they do see some progress on the issue.

In 2014, the county budgeted nearly $2.29 million to fund the public defender, conflict defender, and assigned counsel programs. The 2016 budget is slightly higher at $2.34 million.

“We are very concerned that there is not enough local money to adequately fund public defenders, especially in a county like St. Lawrence, which is not a wealthy county,” said Public Defender Steven Ballan, recently appointed by the county Board of Legislators.

“It’s a fairness issue, an unfunded mandate issue and an issue for indigent defense,” said Stephen Button, who was the county’s chief of indigent defense before he was appointed county attorney.

Button says he has been eager “to move responsibility for funding back to the state,” and has been among the leaders of the effort by many counties in the state to meet their constitutional responsibility for providing legal defense for the indigent by forcing the state to acknowledge its responsibility under the law. To do that, Button says, the state has to provide more money for more staff.

Five Counties Won Suit

While the state seems to be coming around, particularly after the settlement of a suit by five New York counties for more funds, getting the state to pay the cost of defending people who can’t afford attorneys is far from a done deal.

Since that settlement in October 2014, which resulted in larger state allocations to those five counties for their programs, Button and other public defenders have been trying to force the application of those principals to the rest of the state.

Most states took on the cost of those programs themselves after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on constitutional grounds in 1963 that availability of defense counsel is a requirement of the U.S. Constitution, regardless of the accused’s financial situation.

Justice is not served, the court said, if people accused of crimes can’t afford an attorney to defend them, and declared that in such cases an attorney has to be made available to the defendants, paid for by government if necessary.

But such programs are not cheap, and counties like St. Lawrence that do not have a lot of money to allot have seen their programs beset by staffing shortfalls and delays in their work, frequently shortchanging the goal of equal justice.

“The county is working to determine the most cost effective means to deliver the mandated service of providing indigent defense,” said St. Lawrence County Administrator Ruth Doyle, who provided the budget figures for this story.

In St. Lawrence County, much of the money for the public defender’s office has from grants from a patchwork of state programs and other sources, but the core problems of heavy attorney caseloads and too few staff continue to make equal justice elusive.

Services Expensive

“The efforts of New York State in recent years have been focusing on ways to improve the representation that counties provide,” Doyle said.

“It is extremely expensive to provide these services, while maintaining the realities of the region and its economic challenges. The interests of the county are best served by ensuring that there is a means to access the services we are required to provide and to be mindful that the human component is not completely lost amidst the task of paying for the service.”

The five counties’ suit, settled before trial last year, was based on the idea that the Supreme Court had put the responsibility on the states, and that New York was giving justice short shrift by not adequately funding indigent defense programs in the counties.

“How good a defense you get shouldn’t depend on how much money you have,” Ballan said.

“At some point resources become so short it becomes a concern.”

Ballan said some counties are well off enough to have not just attorneys on staff but also investigators, social workers, and people to help find drug rehabilitation programs for defendants.

The only way to get close to equalizing things for people in counties like St. Lawrence “is to ask the state to step in,” Ballan said.

But he says there is progress in defining the issue and designing remedies, and other hopeful signs.

One sign was the support the programs got from the county legislature earlier this month.

The board approved a resolution “calling on New York State to provide for the compete reimbursement of county expenses associated with the provision of indigent defense services.”

“I believe we are better off than we were a couple of years ago,” Button said, pointing a bill on the issue put forward in the Assembly and the support expressed by many around the state. “But we’re still not at the level needed to meet the constitutional mandate.

“In order to add staff at legal defense offices, you have to look at caseloads,” Button said, and responsible parties, such as the American Bar Association, are doing that, while efforts are underway to set new standards for how many cases a legal aide attorney can reasonably be expected to handle.

“But indigent defenders will be in difficulty as long as counties have this unfunded mandate thrust upon them by the state,” Button said.

Other problems have been identified by a commission headed by former New York Chief Judge Judith Kay that brought to light the lack of reasonable workloads, standards, resources including staff, good salaries, current technology, time with clients, and adequate training and supervision in programs across the state. Among other things, the commission concluded that the state and not counties should foot the bill for public defenders.

Legislative Action Sought

In October, Button was among the representatives from around the state at a meeting in Syracuse to see if they could move the issue along. They focused, Button said, on a what he called “an unfunded mandate release bill” put forward by Assemblywoman Patricia Fahey, a Democrat from the Albany area, that would require “state reimbursement to counties the full amount of expenditures for indigent legal services.”

Among its cosponsors are Assembly Members Addie Russell, D-Theresa, whose district covers all the St. Lawrence County towns along the St. Lawrence River plus Canton and Potsdam, and Janet Duprey, R-Peru, whose district includes the easternmost St. Lawrence County towns.

That bill has support from organizations such as the New York State Defenders Association, the state Association of Counties, the Albany County Bar Association, the state County Attorneys Association, and others.

“But in order for the bill to move forward it must have an equivalent bill in the Senate,” Button said. He said Sen. Patty Ritchie, R-Heuvelton, was working on it.

Sen. Ritchie’s office says that the deputy majority leader, Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, has told her he would sponsor the bill in the Senate. If he does, Sen. Ritchie plans to cosponsor it. “If he does not introduce the legislation, then she will,” Ritchie aide Sarah Compo said.