Arkansas public defenders face layoffs without state financial aid, commission director warns

Arkansas Public Defender Commission Executive Director Gregg Parrish explains to Arkansas Legislative Council's Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review subcommittee why he requested $1.25 million in state funds on Monday, August 19, 2024. (Screenshot/Arkansas Legislature)

The Arkansas Public Defender Commission expects to lay off more than 30 attorneys if state lawmakers don’t allocate $1.25 million to continue processing a backlog of more than 5,000 cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic, executive director Gregg Parrish said Monday.

The Arkansas Legislative Council will consider the request Friday after its Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review subcommittee declined to take action Monday. Members expressed concerns that the commission might not have done enough with the $4.5 million in federal funds it received two years ago to address the case backlog.

Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning, moved to defer the request until next month but changed the motion after Parrish said layoffs would begin this week without the requested funds.

The cases being handled by laid-off attorneys would end up in the hands of local public defender offices in the state’s 28 prosecuting attorney districts, Parrish said.

Thousands of cases piled up between March 2020 and June 2021 because there were no in-person court proceedings, Parrish told the American Rescue Plan Act Steering Committee two years ago. The committee has since been dissolved , and the money for Monday’s request would come from the State Central Services Fund .

Some of the cases from that period might have been closed but later reopened while others are still pending, Parrish said. The $4.5 million the commission received in 2022 was meant to fund up to 45 part-time public defender positions, and the commission capped the hiring at 37 positions so as not to run out of money sooner, he said.

He agreed, at the request of Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage, to find out how many cases that opened in the relevant time period have been resolved in the past two years due to the $4.5 million allocation.

PEER co-chair Rep. Frances Cavenaugh, R-Walnut Springs, said she was frustrated that the $4.5 million apparently did not reduce the backlog significantly.

“To be quite frank, I’m tired of hearing about how COVID has put everything on hold… because we’re in 2024, about to be in 2025, and we’re still using COVID as an excuse as to why things can’t get done and caught up,” Cavenaugh said.

Rep. Mark Berry, R-Ozark, asked Parrish why the funding request didn’t come before PEER sooner than within days of potential layoffs.

“Could you not see this train coming down the track?” Berry asked.

Parrish said his request had been in progress since April but had to go through a series of bureaucratic hurdles before PEER could take it up for a vote.

Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, suggested the state needs more judges “to bring reasonable and quick justice to the people of Arkansas.”

Parrish disagreed.

“If we don’t add public defenders — and I would say even prosecutors — what you’re doing [by adding judgeships] is you’re establishing more court dates for the same number of people to try to handle who can’t handle what they’ve got right now,” Parrish said.

He also said it’s difficult to retain full-time public defenders because experienced attorneys tend to take other jobs, leaving recent law school graduates as most of the public defender hiring pool, and those inexperienced attorneys are only equipped to handle misdemeanors and “low-grade felonies.”

‘Wet signature’ defense attorney needed

PEER approved two requests for a cumulative maximum of $500,000 in state funds for the State Board of Election Commissioners to hire legal representation in an ongoing federal court case over a rule requiring in-person signatures on Arkansas voter registration forms.

SBEC is expected to receive $250,000 from the state’s restricted reserve fund and a $250,000 cash appropriation, pending approval from the full Legislative Council on Friday.

Any leftover money will go back to the state, said Chris Madison, the board’s executive director. Lawmakers passed both funding requests on voice votes with no dissent.

The “wet signature” rule would require Arkansans to physically touch pen to paper unless registration forms are completed at certain state agencies, such as the DMV. The SBEC approved the permanent rule in July, a month after being sued.

Voter advocacy group Get Loud Arkansas is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit , which also names Secretary of State John Thurston and the county clerks of Benton, Pulaski and Washington counties as defendants. The suit alleges that limiting the use of electronic signatures for voter registration is a form of suppression , specifically for first-time voters, rural Arkansans and people with disabilities.

The Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard law firm in Little Rock is likely to represent the defendants in the case, Madison told PEER.

Attorney General Tim Griffin usually represents state agencies in court, but he issued an opinion in April that created a potential conflict requiring him to recuse himself, Madison said.

Get Loud Arkansas has been focused on increasing Arkansas’ voter registration rate, the lowest in the nation, and rolled out an online portal in January that assisted applicants in completing the voter registration form, which they signed with an electronic signature.

Proposed Arkansas voter registration rule blocks access, opponents say

In February, Get Loud Arkansas reached out to Thurston’s office about voter registration form signature requirements because the organization had identified “discrepancies in some counties that appear to be disproportionately affecting young, first-time registrants,” according to an email obtained by the Arkansas Times .

In response, a spokesman said while “it’s a sensitive issue” that’s not clear in law, the Secretary of State didn’t see how an electronic signature should be treated differently than a wet one. However, he noted this shouldn’t be treated as an official legal opinion.

Thurston then sought advice from Griffin, who said in the April 10 opinion that “while an electronic signature or mark is generally valid under Arkansas law,” the registration form must be created and distributed by the Secretary of State. A third-party organization can’t create and use a different form of its own to register voters, he said.