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The Minnesota Board of Public Defense made the decision weeks ago because it’s faced with a $3.8 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2009.
The state’s chief public defender, John Stuart, said his office had no choice. Budget cuts have already reduced his staff by 15 percent.
“Public defenders have job descriptions that are written into statute, and they say we represent the minor in juvenile court if they’re over 10. We don’t represent the parents. So reluctantly, we’re going to say that we don’t represent the parents anymore,” Stuart said.
Nonetheless, state law does say those parents must be provided with an attorney if they can’t afford one. That’s because having a child is considered a fundamental right, and when the state takes custody away, even temporarily, it infringes on that right.
Judges may appoint other attorneys to represent parents in child protection cases, but Minnesota law doesn’t say who that will be.
Last week, the state court administrator wrote Minnesota’s chief judges that the law is also vague on who will pay for those attorneys. It’s likely the courts will turn to the counties to pay the tabs.
That doesn’t please the counties, which already have their own budget problems and are contending with caps on property tax increases imposed by the 2008 Legislature.
Keith Carlson is executive director of the Minnesota Intercounty Association, which represents Minnesota’s 13 largest counties. He said the state agreed to pay for public defenders during the early 1990s.
“At that time we gave up state aid, dollar for dollar, assuming the cost for public defender services,” Carlson said. “So we believe we’ve already paid for this and that funding obligation now resides with the state. And consequently, the state is ultimately the party that should be paying for it.”
Last week, Beltrami County Administrator Tony Murphy told commissioners the public defenders’ decision will cost the county another $20,000 to $40,000 a year. At the same time, the Legislature capped the county’s property tax increase to 3.9 percent.
“If we have to spend $40,000 more, and it doesn’t apply to a special levy but is under the levy limit, it takes money away from core services to spend on an unfunded mandate,” Murphy said.
In Mower County, the county commissioners decided to hire their own public defender for those child protection cases. It’s expected to cost $20,000 for the rest of this fiscal year and $40,000 next year.
Further complicating the situation is that while judges may order counties to pay for these services, there’s no legal requirement of the counties to pay promptly.
In fact, one law says that if a judge orders a county to pay for a service that wasn’t in the budget, the county may wait to pay until the next fiscal year.
All the budget wrangling could mean more delays in child protection cases, said attorney Gail Chang Bohr, who heads the Children’s Law Project, which advocates on behalf of children in the foster care system.
“Those delays aren’t good for kids. They’re not good for anybody, but specifically for kids,” she said. “When kids are sitting out there in limbo and not sure what’s supposed to be happening next, it really does create a lot of insecurity and anxiety in that child.”
