Maine’s public defense commission seeks another $64M to fund new offices and boost lawyer pay

Maine’s Commission on Public Defense Services is seeking an additional $64 million in state funding over the next few years to fund three new offices, dozens of staff positions and pay increases to attract more attorneys.

In a budget request released this week, the commission asked for $5 million to increase the hourly rate for attorneys taking on more complex cases, or taking cases in parts of the state where attorney rosters are particularly thin.

Some commissioners expressed reservations about creating a graduated pay scale, especially after the state last year increased the pay rate for court-appointed work to $150 an hour, up from $80.

“We’re now shifting gears, aren’t we,” Commissioner Roger Katz said during a meeting Monday, “And saying, ‘Well, you know, the $150 really isn’t enough. We’ve really got to raise that for particular kinds of cases.’ And I just worry about how some people might receive that.”

But Executive Director Jim Billings said the pay incentive is crucial to making a dent in the backlog of more than 800 unrepresented cases.

“I don’t see anything meaningfully happening on that unrepresented list unless we change what we’re doing now and become more aggressive and try to place those cases,” he said.

The proposal also asks for funding to create three new public defender offices, in Cumberland County, York County and the midcoast.

Billings intends to seek funding for those offices as emergency legislation and to get them up and running as soon as possible in 2025.

“The sooner we have authorization for Cumberland, York and midcoast to get started on hiring and filling those positions, the sooner those offices can open and add that capacity,” Billings said.

The commission is opening a public defender office in Caribou this month, and is staffing up an office in Lewiston.

The supplemental funding request comes on top of the commission’s baseline annual budget of roughly $40 million.

While Billings emphasized that the numbers are not final, if the current request is approved, the commission’s total budget would be $74 million in fiscal year 2026, and $69 million in fiscal year 2027.

This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public .