Lawyers doing contracted public defense work in Maine might go more than three months without pay after House Republicans withheld their initial support from emergency funding legislation.
The Maine Commission on Public Defense Services is about $13 million short of what it needs this fiscal year to pay private attorneys who represent low-income criminal defendants and parents in court.
Director Frayla Tarpinian said during a meeting Monday that without emergency funding the agency will not be able to reimburse private lawyers from April to mid-July for work they’ve already performed. There were roughly 180 attorneys signed up for public defense work in February, according to the commission.
The House is expected to vote again on the emergency proposal as soon as this week. It needs a two-thirds majority to take effect before lawmakers adjourn, which would allow the governor to sign it before April 1.
Some lawyers are already preparing for the worst.
Robert Ruffner, who oversees a team of 11 other lawyers exclusively handling public defense cases in southern Maine, notified the commission on March 3 that his office cannot accept new cases. He said on Monday that he has also stopped paying himself “to try and prepare for this.”
“If I can’t find funding, I will not be able to keep my doors open,” Ruffner said.
Rep. Rachel Henderson, R-Rumford, said on Monday that she supports giving the commission emergency funding, but she wants the House to pass a competing proposal that would rescind collective bargaining rights for the state’s roughly 35 public defenders (who are overseen by the commission.)
Henderson said it’s unfair that defenders can unionize while prosecutors are legally barred from participating in collective bargaining, echoing a concern raised by Gov. Janet Mills last year.
“I felt like this was a great time to force a conversation on why we have an entire part of our justice system that can be unionized, and the rest can’t,” Henderson said.
House Democrats argued last week that the emergency funding bill only applies to private lawyers, not state-employed public defenders.
“I genuinely do not understand what we are debating here today,” said Rep. Adam Lee, D-Auburn. “This bill compensates people who have already done work last year. The alternative says let’s wait 90 days to compensate those people we know we owe money to.”
On the House floor last week, Henderson also argued that Democrats were the ones who clawed back about $10 million from the commission last year, leading to the shortfall.
Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, told lawmakers that occurred because state leaders were still calculating the commission’s budget using an outdated reimbursement rate for private lawyers.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth, said on Monday she’s concerned with Henderson’s proposal because it hasn’t been subjected to a public hearing.
Henderson said her proposal is the same as one from Mills last year, when lawmakers were debating another emergency public defense bill.
Lawmakers have discussed studying pay parity concerns between prosecutors and public defenders. Maine hired its first defenders in 2022, after having exclusively relied on private, court appointed counsel.
Mills’ office did not respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon. Her supplemental budget proposal includes about $25 million for the commission, which covers the $13 million shortfall this fiscal year and an anticipated $9 million gap the next fiscal year.
Tarpinian said during a meeting on Monday that the commission will eventually get paid. But she and others are worried about when that money will be distributed.
Ruffner said he felt the emergency funding for lawyers like him is “being held hostage” in the debate. He worried on Monday about having to lay off his staff, many of whom he said are working with vulnerable clients, including juveniles accused of crime.
“When we shortchange the system,” Ruffner said, “the clients pay it first and foremost.”
