Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Legal Services topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Commissioners trim court-appointed attorneys and expert-witness fees to balance budget
Summary
Commissioners proposed cutting allocations for court-appointed attorneys and expert witnesses across districts, freeing tens of thousands of dollars to cover higher priorities while staff cautioned the reductions could prompt return requests during the year.
During line-by-line review, commissioners targeted several legal-defense and expert-fee lines for reduction. One commissioner said last year’s expenditures justified trimming allocated amounts and proposed reducing court-appointed attorney allocations in multiple accounts to $100,000 (then compromise to $120,000), and lowering expert-witness funding from $35,000 to $30,000. “We budgeted $380,000 between the two district judges last year for court appointed attorneys…to this point, we have spent $120,000,” a commissioner said while arguing for reductions.
Staff cautioned that cutting these lines would leave less contingency and could require departments to return to court for more funds if indigency-related expenses spike. The court agreed to a set of specific reductions (CPS court-appointed to $50,000; expert-witness fees to $30,000; several court-appointed attorney lines to $120,000) and asked staff to update the packet with page and line numbers for the proposed adjustments.
