Public defender’s budget request up 8% from last year

From The Republican & Herald:

Harry Rubright, chief county public defender, told the commissioners Tuesday the need to appoint special counsel in some drug and other cases is one reason for an 8 percent increase in costs for 2008. He said cases involving multiple defendants created potential conflict of interest issues for his office, thus requiring payments to outside lawyers.

But minority Commissioner Mantura M. Gallagher, a Democrat who will seek re-election with running mate and county Sheriff Francis V. McAndrew against Republican majority commissioners Frank J. Staudenmeier and Robert S. Carl Jr., asked whether there are additional conflicts of interest.

Specifically, Gallagher asked how often part-time defenders’ outside practices caused conflicts with cases requiring appointment of outside attorneys.

“As long as you’re under the jurisdiction of the commissioners, I believe it’s my responsibility to the taxpayers to ask these questions,” Gallagher said after Rubright continued to insist that he believed his office was run in the most effective way possible.

The public defender’s office was one of six departments to be re-viewed by the commissioners in a two-hour budget hearing in the Hofmann room near the commissioners’ offices in the courthouse.

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