The members of this local are tired of reading the onslaught of editorials from the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board in recent days which advocate across the board cuts to the County’s budget and oppose any tax increase. The Tribune has characterized county workers as folks who are “whining” about the budget. The fact is that Tribune Editorial Board doesn’t have a clue as to what a budget cut of 10% would mean to the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender. We have printed below, in its entirety, the letter that Vice President Brendan Max sent to the Tribune in response to their recent editorials on the county budget.
Letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune
December 18, 2007
The broad-brush strokes applied by this paper’s editorial board, and other commentators, to the County budget process sometimes misses important detail. To those of us who provide needed services to the citizens of Cook County, the details matter.For instance, in support of 10% across-the-board budget cuts, the Tribune editorial board characterized discussion of the impact of such cuts on the criminal justice system as “whining.” While there is always much whining over the politics of the County budget process, there are also objective assessments of the budgetary needs of some county departments that should be part of the budget debate. And reference to these objective assessments isn’t whining, it’s reality.So, for those in favor of further reducing the Cook County Public Defender Office staffing by 55 attorneys as part of indiscriminate across-the-board cuts, you should consider the reality of these cuts on our Office.Just this month, a commission of judges, law professors, and other attorneys completed a 2-year review of the Cook County justice system, including an in-depth review of the Office of the Public Defender. While others may inform their budget commentary by momentary “strolls” through county departments in search of lazy personnel, this Commission of 11 members and dozens of other staff studied the Cook County justice system for months, conducted over 100 interviews, and observed 160 hours of court proceedings. And here is what they found:
- Assistant public defenders in Cook County handle case loads way in excess of national standards, and in excess of their counterparts in many other public defender systems.
- The average felony attorney in Cook County handles 229 cases, while public defenders in New York and Minnesota handle between 100-150 cases.
- This understaffing problem is compounded by the chronic shortage of support staff, including paralegals, secretaries, and investigators. Our Office is nowhere near the national minimum standards for support staff.
- Newly hired attorneys in the Office don’t receive adequate training, and the lack of available budget impacts this failure.
- Office space is characterized by desks that are scotch-taped together, broken water fountains, and insect infestations.
The members of this Commission recommend that hiring practices in the Office of the Public Defender be reformed, that steps be taken to reduce the excessive caseloads carried by assistant public defenders, and that more resources be provided for attorney training.Far from whining, this is reality. For those in favor of cutting dozens more attorneys from the Office of the Public Defender, you owe it to the public discourse to either concede that such cuts will result in the further gutting of an Office that is already teetering on the edge by all objective measures, or tell us how “an automation plan” is going to solve our problems and reduce our caseloads. The fact is, cutting staffing levels further in our understaffed Office makes illusory the constitutional guarantee to effective counsel for citizens facing criminal punishment. In a society where we have chosen to prosecute and lock up so many of our citizens for ever-increasing sentences, yet simultaneously cut funding to public defender services, discussion of this reality should never be labeled “whining.”As the men and women of our understaffed and under-resourced Office fight daily from our scotch-taped desks to keep the justice system afloat, we would appreciate seeing this bit of reality reported. Brendan P. Max, Assistant Public Defender
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