Sullivan gets a failing grade for county legal aid program

Lack of money is the cause

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY - If you’re poor and you get arrested in Sullivan County, chances are very good that you’ll be assigned a legal aid lawyer that won’t have time to adequately defend you.

That’s one of the conclusions by the National League of Defenders Association in a study released on May 21. Specifically, the county received an “F” for “reasonable workloads” and other standards set by the American Bar Association for legal aid lawyers. But it’s not as if Sullivan County is alone. Two other counties, Jefferson and Lewis, received similarly low grades. And 22 other New York counties also received poor grades in previous studies.

Moreover, the grades for Sullivan weren’t all failing ones. Sullivan, for instance, got a “C-” for client confidentiality, and its highest grade, a “C,” for minimum qualification of legal aid lawyers.

Legislator Ron Hiatt, who is a practicing lawyer, took the report seriously. He immediately sent out a letter to judges, prosecutors, defenders and others in the county legal community to ask for suggestions on how to fix the problems laid out in the report.

Jonathan Gradess, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association, says the answer to the chronic problems plaguing the public defender system in the county, and across the state, is to set up a statewide system of public defense, as exists in most other states, rather than have the system managed at the county level.

Gradess said that the state government could make more resources available to defendants who can’t afford legal representation.

The executive director of Sullivan County Legal Aid Panel, the non-profit that handles the bulk of legal aid cases in the county, agreed. Stephan Schick also said, however, that money is the root of the problem.

In a letter written in response to Hiatt’s letter, Schick wrote that, in 2008, the budget for his organization is $800,000; in 1994, the budget was $890,000. So, despite increases in just about all costs, and with a greater caseload, the county is giving the agency less money to fulfill its mission of handling about 3,000 cases per year.

According to the report, the caseload for county legal aid lawyers is 60 percent higher than national standards recommend.

Shick also wrote that there should be parity between the compensation paid to legal aid professionals and those who work for the district attorney’s office, the county attorney’s office and others in the county legal community. He estimates that to achieve the goal of parity, his agency would need an additional $400,000 per year.

He added, however, that he understands that legal aid is not a popular county budget item. “It is hard to explain to county taxpayers that the budget must increase to pay for high-quality representation for people who are accused of burglarizing their homes or selling drugs to their children,” he wrote. That’s why he favors the state taking over legal aid with the creation of an independent public defense commission.

In 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that every person accused of a crime in the United States is entitled to competent, quality legal representation. The people who created the report on Sullivan County legal aid say that, because of a lack of resources in the public defender program in the county and the state, people sit in jails today because they don’t have access to such representation.