Grant County needs approval for public defense system

EPHRATA — Grant County has until May 28 to get approval for its new in-house public defense system.

Tito Rodriguez, who monitors the public defenders as part of a 2005 settlement agreement, sent a nine-page letter to the county’s insurance company, detailing concerns about the department.

The county switched from contracting attorneys to a combination of county-employed attorneys and contracted attorneys at the beginning of the year.

While Rodriguez stated he approved hiring Rafael Gonzales as a supervising defense attorney, he didn’t approve making the public defense department part of the county.

The settlement agreement states the county needs to submit a proposal for changing its public defense system to the monitor 120 days before the change.

Rodriguez claimed the written proposal was submitted in December.

Grant County Commissioner Richard Stevens said the county talked to Rodriguez about the changes in October 2008, but they didn’t formally request approval until December.

“But Alan (White) was still the supervising attorney,” he said. “We hired Ray (Gonzales) to just start working on it.”

Rodriguez is concerned about how much the prosecuting attorneys get paid compared to how much the public defenders get paid. According to the letter, felony prosecutors make $8,000 more than the highest paid in-house defender.

“John Perry has been an attorney in Washington since 1986 and has more than 10 years of criminal (law) experience. Still, he is paid substantially less than his counterparts in the prosecutor’s office,” he stated.

Stevens said there is not a salary discrepancy. Both Gonzales and former prosecutor John Knodell and present Prosecutor Angus Lee are allowed to start the attorneys wherever they want on the county’s pay scale.

“If you look at the wages of the new people Angus (Lee) hired, you’ll find they’re all lower,” he said. “The scale is identical, (the prosecutors) have been there for more years, so they’re at different levels. There’s nothing broken about it.”

Rodriguez said the variability, in where on the pay scale newly hired attorneys start, is a problem and the county needs to work on a way to make an objective system, such as one based on experience.

“If you’re new, that would start you at one level. If you have experience, that would start you at another level,” he said. “That’s going to help the county too, to keep costs down.”

The county needs to adjust the existing salaries so they are equal based on the policy they create, he claims.

“I expect they’re not going to lower the prosecutors’ salaries,” he said.

Rodriguez also questioned whether the county had a policy in place to deal with conflicts of interest. The change in the defense system means if one in-house attorney has a conflict of interest, the entire department has the same conflict.

Gonzales said the department is working on developing a process to deal with potential conflicts of interest.

“How conflicts are dealt with are governed by the state bar association. We’re trying to determine what mechanism the office uses to comply with the state rules,” he said.

Rodriguez also wondered whether the in-house attorneys would only be assigned the 150 case credits, the limit mandated by the settlement agreement, according to the letter.

“The annual limit assumes that the cases are spread relatively evenly throughout the year to ensure a reasonable workload for the assigned defender,” he stated.

Gonzales said he is committed to the 150-case credit limit for the in-house defenders.

“I don’t think that’s a real issue,” he said. “We’re keeping that. It’s set both by the settlement, but first it’s set by the state regulations.”

While Stevens said he’s happy the county avoided going to court, he is not happy with Rodriguez’s concerns. He said after four public defenders left for Okanogan County at the beginning of the year, the county was heading for a breach of the settlement agreement one way or the other. It was better to have a breach of the agreement which allowed the public defense department to continue operating well, he said.

“It’s being overly sensitive,” he said.

The county agreed to pay $10,000 in court costs for now, and the plaintiff’s agreed to waive $200,000 in payments for 2007 and 2008.

If the county and the monitor can’t come to an agreement, then there will be a $40,000 charge, unless Grant County successfully appeals the decision.

Stevens said the county is going to work on getting the monitor’s approval.

“It shouldn’t be a big deal,” he said.