County Council approves $150,000 to cover outside counsel for public defender

Vanderburgh County Council on a voice vote approved a $150,000 appropriation to help the public defender’s office pay outside counsel for cases the office cannot staff.

The money was requested after the public defender described months-long caseload pressures that have forced the office to retain outside lawyers at an hourly rate. The council approved the allocation after a lengthy discussion of costs, caseload standards and ways to reduce future outsourcing.

The public defender, identified in the meeting as Steve, told the council the office receives new felony cases at a rate that has outpaced its capacity since 2023. “I think the current ones that we have that Crystal has on her desk are somewhere in 180 some odd thousand dollars,” Steve said when asked about outstanding vendor bills, adding that bills continue to arrive daily. He said the office has farmed out “1,800 and some odd cases” since the staffing shortfall began and that average outside-counsel bills are “running around a thousand dollars a case.”

Council members pressed for detail on how outside counsel is engaged and paid. Steve said the county generally pays outside attorneys a flat $125 per hour when salaried deputies are full; that figure was set through earlier local negotiations and is consistent with what some neighboring jurisdictions pay. He said the county does not reimburse travel or per-diem expenses in those contracts and that many out-of-county appointments are assigned through the state public defender office when local capacity is exhausted.

Council members asked for data to help the county understand whether the problem is internal (staffing gaps) or external (increased filings). “I think it would be helpful if we could have, like, a 4 or 5 year blip to say…what’s the number of cases?” one council member said. Steve and others agreed the issue is partly systemic: filing and appointment volumes have increased, and new caseload standards from the Public Defender Commission tightened allowable per-attorney caseloads beginning January 2024.

The council voted to approve the $150,000 appropriation by voice. No roll-call tally with individual names was recorded in the meeting transcript; the motion was seconded and the chair called the ayes before saying “Motion carries.”

Council members and public defender staff agreed to continue the discussion outside the meeting. Several councilors said they would meet with the public defender’s office and with court stakeholders to assemble historical caseload data and options for reducing reliance on outside counsel, including adding full-time felony public defenders or altering local appointment practices.

The council recorded no ordinance change during the meeting; the appropriation was a one-time funding action and council members requested follow-up information on outstanding bills, year-to-year filings, the number of full-time hires needed to absorb outsourced work and whether travel time is billed on outside-counsel invoices.

Ending: Council members said they will schedule more detailed briefings with the public defender and judiciary and expect a follow-up presentation with multi-year caseload data and options for addressing the outsourcing costs.