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Public Defender warns council cuts will shift cases to private bar and raise city costs
Summary
Public Defender Jeff Adachi told supervisors that proposed cuts of roughly $1.9 million would force outsourcing of thousands of cases, raising costs and causing court delays; budget analysts proposed trimming specialty contract lines but the department says outsourcing would be costlier and risk constitutional exposure.
Jeff Adachi, San Francisco—s Public Defender, told the Budget & Finance Committee that proposed staffing and salary cuts in the mayor—s budget would undermine the city—s indigent-defense system and could increase overall costs.
Adachi said the mayor—s proposals would require about $1.9 million in reductions from his salary budget and could remove 11.4 full-time attorney positions. "If we save $1,900,000 by reducing the public defender's budget, we would have to lay off attorneys... at least 2,800 cases would have to be outsourced to the private bar," Adachi said, citing internal case-cost calculations. He argued that outsourcing misdemeanors and felonies to appointed private counsel can be more expensive per case than in-house representation and would create court delays and additional jail days while private counsel prepared long-standing cases.
Budget analyst Harvey Rose recommended trimming $100,000 from one costly co-counsel contract account (Mr. Adachi agreed to $50,000 of that reduction) and questioned whether some specialized-contract budgets were over-budgeted relative to recent actuals. Court officials warned the committee the superior court requests more indigent defense funding because conflict-counsel bills can be submitted long after services are performed; Superior Court CFO Mike Ewan said the court expects some bills to come to the county in the next fiscal year and has requested a $1.2 million increase to the court—s indigent-defense allocation to catch up with accrued bills.
Adachi and the budget analyst exchanged cost-per-case data. Adachi's office provided an analysis (prepared with Department of Technology workload data) showing the city's public defender cost per felony or misdemeanor case is lower than contracted conflict-counsel rates; the Public Defender presented a model showing that shifting dozens of attorneys— work to the private bar could raise city costs by an estimated $1.4 million the first year and tens of millions over time once court continuances and jail-day costs are included.
Supervisors pressed both sides to reconcile accounting approaches before deciding. The committee asked the public defender, controller and budget analyst to work together and return with reconciled cost-per-case figures, details on the People v. Bell (SF 8) litigation budget, and clearer projections about how many outsourced cases would be generated by any proposed layoffs. The committee signaled it expects follow-up data before any changes are finalized.
