Committee advances bills to clarify when Public Defense Service must pay court-appointed attorneys
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Summary
After the PDS annual report, staff presented draft language clarifying which court-appointed attorneys PDS must pay; members debated extending a temporary statute, conditioning payment on attorney consent and PDS eligibility, and oversight safeguards, then voted to report committee bills to pursue both options for public hearings.
Committee staff presented recommendations from the Public Defense Services annual report and a draft committee bill clarifying when the Commission on Public Defense Services (PDS) is required to pay court-appointed counsel. The discussion followed the public hearing on LD 2059 and focused on two related questions: whether a temporary statutory authority (the statute enacted as part of LD 11o1, codified as 18o7) should be extended, and whether a long-term framework should condition PDS payment on attorney consent and eligibility under PDS rules.
Staffer Janet Stocco explained that LD 11o1 currently requires PDS to pay private attorneys appointed by courts when no PDS attorney is available and if the attorneys meet minimum experience thresholds, but that statute is set to repeal on Feb. 1 (18o7). The committee considered a short-term reenactment or extension of that temporary authority to prevent a gap, and a second proposal to adopt a consent-plus-eligibility rule for longer-term policy: courts could appoint private counsel, but PDS would not be required to compensate attorneys unless the attorney consented to the appointment and met PDS eligibility standards.
Judicial branch counsel Julie Finn said a hybrid approach could be workable: reenact or preserve the temporary statute for the near term while authorizing a consent-and-eligibility rule to govern long-term payment responsibility. PDS Executive Director Freyla Tarpenian and other witnesses urged clarity so PDS can maintain financial oversight, auditing and standards for allowable expenses; Tarpenian said PDS could not accept a permanent system that entirely bypasses its oversight and billing rules.
Committee members raised specific issues that staff will refine in drafting: whether Fifth Amendment counsel (attorneys appointed to advise nonparty witnesses who may invoke the Fifth Amendment) and certain parental-rights proceedings should be explicitly included, how financial eligibility screening would be handled in emergency appointments, and whether temporary extensions should have a sunset date. After debate and caucus the committee voted to report out two committee bills for public hearings: one extending the temporary payment statute or reenacting it, and a second establishing consent-and-eligibility rules for PDS payment with agreed language to preserve PDS oversight functions.
The committee asked staff to work with PDS and judicial branch counsel to produce final bill texts for public hearing and to provide additional fiscal and eligibility detail during the work-session process.
