- Lael Henterly
- Seen waiting yesterday for a public defense deal, from left to right: Dave Chapman, the director of King County’s Department of Public Defense; Dwight Dively, the county’s Budget Director; and Twyla Carter, one of the county’s public defenders.
What does King County care about? If yesterday’s Metropolitan King County Council meeting—in which the County Council unanimously approved a $9 billion, two-year budget—is any indication, the county cares about lots and lots of things. So many things! The county cares about keeping medical marijuana gardens out of the suburbs, it cares about water conservation, and it cares about not rashly eliminating paper bus transfers and keeping the King County Fair going. People affiliated with all of those causes ventured into the city just to thank the county for caring.
Members of the Public Defense Advisory Board and employees of the Department of Public defense came down, too. But for different reasons. They packed the chambers, standing shoulder to shoulder in a display of support for preserving quality public defense in this county—a program that was facing a harmful cut of 40 employees, including 20 attorneys.
“These folks who thanked you today were involved from the get go, we weren’t,” admitted Public Defense Advisory Board (PDAB) member Tom Hillier, describing the proposed budget as a potential disaster and noting that until it was proposed, the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) had no idea it would be losing 40 employees on January 1, 2015. “We’re looking to you to put on the brakes, to give us a process to rectify this before it becomes irreparable harm,” Hillier said.
The DPD-affiliated speakers beseeched the council members to have mercy and postpone the gutting of their department. There were so many that King county Council Chairman Larry Phillips almost looked relieved when concerned citizen—and frequent public ranter—Alex Zimmerman stood up to talk about how the council members were worse than Nazis. (He then used obscene language and had to be removed from the chambers.)
As one public defense-affiliated commenter after another pointed out, King County’s public defender program has long been heralded as a national role model. It won’t be able to maintain that status with 40 fewer employees, and the damage won’t be easy to repair if the county only realizes the mistake down the road.
“This is not legos, we cannot take it apart and fix it later,” said public defender Twyla Carter.
King County Budget Director Dwight Dively came under fire last week for claims that the county could save money by contracting public defense cases out to private attorneys. Public Defense Advisory Board member Jefferey Robinson, speaking before the council yesterday, added to the criticism of Dively’s plan, calling his proposed savings “illusory.”
“The people you are eliminating are doing absolutely vital things,” Robinson told the council members.
But after several lengthy recesses things were looking grim. The public defense advocates were beginning to bite their finger nails. A vote loomed. Council member Larry Gossett called yet another five minute recess, pulling interim DPD Director Dave Chapman and Dively into the back room for a chat.
Five minutes turned into an hour before Gossett emerged, nibbling on a butter cookie. Phillips called the council back to order and Gossett proposed a short but sweet amendment that will freeze layoffs through April 1, buying three months for the DPD to seek supplemental funding from the county or elsewhere—and to better prepare for potential layoffs.
“We are encouraged by the amendment because it bought the time necessary to address the real problem, but the problem hasn’t gone away,” said DPD Union President Matt Pang. “Now that they are aware of the impact and committed to studying it, we feel confident that they will approach it with the same level of attention that has led them to maintain our funding through other lean times.”
Pang hopes that in the work group process it becomes clear that the public defense system is already far more lean than it should be.
“King County has a well-deserved national reputation for excellence in protecting the rights of the accused, earned by the hard-working public defenders and staff,” said Executive Dow Constantine, adding that the working group will help public defense “modernize” and “create new efficiencies.” Which sounds spookily like he wants to hire robots, but I guess we’ll find out in the new year.
“We live to fight another day,” said Carter, exhaling with relief before jumping up, grabbing her bag and running out the door to go meet with a client at the jail. Just another day in the life of a public defender.