Cuomo veto leaves indigent defense community wondering

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The two main players in the local publicly funded defense community are disappointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s veto of a bill that would have shifted the cost of such work from the county to the state.

“We think that counties simply aren’t in the position to dedicate the resources necessary to improve indigent defense,” Monroe County Public Defender Tim Donaher said.

“The resources that are needed have to come from the state,” he said.

Currently, the state provides about 20 percent of the funding in most counties. In Monroe County, the total cost of indigent legal services, including the Monroe County Public Defender’s Office, the county’s Conflict Defender and the assigned counsel program, is about $14 million. The county pays about $11.7 million of that.

The issue is related to the state Legislature’s 2009 approval of special funding to the five boroughs of New York City to pay for enough lawyers to alleviate excessive caseloads there.

The New York Civil Liberties Union brought a suit against the state and five counties — Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler, Suffolk and Washington — over the quality of defense services provided to indigent defendants. A 2014 settlement in the Hurrell-Harring case provided additional funding to the five counties involved in the suit.

But that settlement created a disparity in services between those counties and the other 52 upstate counties, advocates say. The plan that was vetoed by Cuomo was intended to resolve that disparity and also shift the entire financial burden for indigent legal services from the counties.

The bill that Cuomo vetoed went far beyond just extending to the entire state the same funding for services provided to the Hurrell-Harring counties.

In his veto statement, Cuomo said the bill would cost the state $800 million annually, including nearly $650 million for services unrelated to the Hurrell-Harring agreement, such as non-criminal defense work in family court and surrogate court.

“The most troubling thing that I saw out of the governor’s veto was that he seemed to me to say that legal defense work for Family Court was unnecessary,” said Monroe County Conflict Defender Mark Funk.

“We have attorneys representing people in Family Court dealing with their parental rights, their rights to see their children on a regular basis,” Funk said.

Cuomo said he supports state funding for services included in the Hurrell-Harring settlement, including having an attorney for defendants at their first court appearances, and limits on caseloads for assigned counsel. But the legislation, he said, went far beyond those changes.

“The need for reform in the area of indigent defense is clear,” Cuomo said in the statement.

Cuomo has promised to address the issue this year.

“In the coming months, my administration will introduce a plan to bring these groundbreaking reforms to the rest of the state,” he said in the veto statement.

Donaher said there is still confidence that additional state funding will eventually be allocated for indigent defense services.

“We’re all optimistic that this is going to lead to additional resources. We’re all watching and waiting with great interest on how this is going to proceed moving forward,” he said.