We have received official notice from the County that the layoff notices that purported to be effective on March 19th are recinded. Therefore, anyone who received such notices in our Office can disregard those notices. If and when layoffs occur in the future, new notices will have to be provided to assistant public defenders.
With regard to when future notices may issue and how many assistant public defenders may be laid off, we are still not sure. As a matter of fact, Stroger’s office has not even finalized layoffs for our Office yet. In a letter dated March 13, 2007, Jonathan Rothstein (Special Assistant to Todd Stroger) stated the following: “We are in the process of finalizing the positions affected by the budget cuts imposed by the Board of Commissioners, and will provide you with additional notice as necessary.” Until the number of layoffs and notice dates are finalized, no one can say for sure what the layoff situation looks like in our Office. While one could reasonably believe that the official budget process which ended in February was the final and definitive word on layoffs in our Office, that is simply not the case. As we have stated here before, as soon as a definitive number and date for layoffs is available, we will report it here.
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