Indigent defense director warns of constitutional risk as caseloads and turnover climb; commission seeks pay and investigator hires

The Senate Appropriations Committee heard a budget request from the Commission on Legal Counsel for Indigence on Tuesday, where Executive Director Travis Fink described rising caseloads, high staff turnover and short-staffed investigative resources that he said risk a constitutional failure in public defense.

Fink told the committee the commission provides counsel whenever “there's a constitutional, statutory or rule-based right to counsel at public expense,” and that most work involves adult criminal cases. He said fiscal year 2024 was the agency’s highest caseload on record and that the mix of cases includes more time-consuming felonies: “If we were to adopt [recent national] workload standards ... we would need four times as many attorneys,” Fink said, summarizing a RAND report on workload standards.

Fink said the commission has 41 FTE positions and reported turnover…