I stand with the private bar

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I share the motivations behind AB576, which would make more persons eligible for representation by the State Public Defender.

In order to qualify today, a person must be poor enough to have qualified for AFDC, in 1987. Needless to say, many poor people, who cannot possibly afford representation on their own, fail to qualify under that standard. Effectively, anybody who works at all fails to qualify.

The problem is that, unless the rate paid to private attorneys who accept public defender cases is increased, too much of the burden of this change will be passed on to attorneys.

The SPD pays $40 per hour to private attorneys. If a person can’t afford an attorney, but fails to qualify under the antiquated eligibility standards, the circuit court must appoint an attorney, and the county pays the attorney, at twice that rate.

So, county taxpayers will benefit from this legislation; and state taxpayers will pick up some of that. Additional staff positions will be created within the SPD to pick up some of the additional caseload. Overall, the taxpayers of Wisconsin will benefit.

However, the reason they will benefit is because some of the caseload will pass to private attorneys, the difference being that they will only be paid $40 per hour by the state, instead of $80 per hour by the county for the same work.

I’m all for legal representation for the indigent in criminal cases. I just can’t support a proposal under which everybody benefits except the private attorneys who make the whole system work. The state must raise the rate paid to private attorneys for any proposal to be acceptable.