The Arkansas Public Defender Commission expects to lay off more than 30 attorneys if the state legislature does not provide $1.25 million to continue working through a backlog of more than 5,000 cases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Executive Director Gregg Parrish said Monday.
The Arkansas Legislature will consider the request on Friday after its Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Subcommittee declined to take action on Monday. Members expressed concerns that the commission may not have done enough to $4.5 million in federal funding which it received two years ago to clear the backlog of cases.
Senator Blake Johnson (R-Corning) requested that the request be postponed until next month, but changed his request after Parrish said that without the requested funds, layoffs would begin this week.
The cases handled by fired attorneys would end up in the hands of local public defender offices in the state’s 28 prosecutorial districts, Parrish said.
Thousands of cases piled up between March 2020 and June 2021 because there were no in-person court hearings, Parrish told the American Rescue Plan Act Steering Committee two years ago. The committee has since been dissolvedand the money for Monday’s request would come from the State Central Services Fund.
Some of the cases from that period may have been closed but later reopened, while others are still pending, Parrish said. The $4.5 million the commission received in 2022 was intended to fund up to 45 part-time public defender positions, and the commission has capped hiring at 37 positions to avoid running out of money sooner, he said.
At the request of Representative Jeff Wardlaw (R-Hermitage), he agreed to find out how many cases opened during the period in question were resolved over the past two years thanks to the $4.5 million allocation.
PEER co-chair Rep. Frances Cavenaugh (R-Walnut Springs) said she was frustrated that the $4.5 million did not appear to have significantly reduced the backlog.
“To be honest, I’m sick of hearing that everything has been put on hold because of COVID … because we’re in 2024, soon to be 2025, and we’re still using COVID as an excuse why we can’t get things done and catch up,” Cavenaugh said.
Rep. Mark Berry (R-Ozark) asked Parrish why the funding request was not submitted to PEER earlier than a few days before potential layoffs.
“Couldn’t you see the train going down the tracks?” asked Berry.
Parrish said his application had been in process since April but had to overcome a number of bureaucratic hurdles before PEER could put it to a vote.
Republican Senate President Bart Hester of Cave Springs said the state needs more judges “to provide fair and prompt justice to the people of Arkansas.”
Parrish disagreed.
“If we don’t add public defenders – and I would even say prosecutors – we are creating additional court dates (by creating additional judge positions) for the same number of people who cannot cope with what they have right now,” Parrish said.
He also said it is difficult to retain full-time public defenders because experienced lawyers tend to take other jobs, so the majority of public defender positions are made up of recent law graduates, and these inexperienced lawyers, in turn, are only equipped to handle misdemeanors and “lesser crimes.”
Defender with “wet signature” wanted
PEER approved two requests for a total of up to $500,000 in state funds for the State Board of Election Commissioners to hire legal counsel in an ongoing federal lawsuit. a rule that requires personal signatures on Arkansas voter registration forms.
SBEC is expected to receive $250,000 from the state’s restricted reserve fund and a cash allocation of $250,000, subject to approval by 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 by voice vote with no dissenting votes.
The wet signature rule would require Arkansas residents to physically put pen to paper unless they are filling out registration forms at certain state agencies, such as the DMV. The SBEC approved the constant rule in July, one month after the lawsuit.
The voter organization Get Loud Arkansas is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuitwhich also names Secretary of State John Thurston and the county clerks of Benton, Pulaski and Washington counties as defendants. The suit alleges that restricting the use of electronic signatures in voter registration is a form of suppression, particularly for first-time voters, people from rural Arkansas and people with disabilities.
The Little Rock law firm Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard will likely represent the defendants in the case, Madison told PEER.
Attorney General Tim Griffin typically represents state agencies in court, but in April he issued an opinion that raised a potential conflict of interest and forced him into bias, Madison said.
Get Loud Arkansas has focused on increasing Arkansas’ voter registration rate – the lowest in the country – and in January launched an online portal to help applicants complete the voter registration form, which they sign with an electronic signature.
Opponents say proposed voter registration rule in Arkansas blocks access
In February, Get Loud Arkansas contacted Thurston’s office about the signature requirements for voter registration forms because the organization had “identified discrepancies in some counties that appear to disproportionately affect young first-time registrants,” according to an email obtained by the Arkansas Times.
A spokesman responded that while it was “a sensitive issue” that was not legally clear, the Secretary of State did not see how an electronic signature should be treated any differently to a handwritten one. He noted, however, that this should not be treated as an official legal opinion.
Thurston then sought advice from Griffin, who said in the statement of 10 April “Although an electronic signature or electronic mark is generally valid under Arkansas law,” the registration form must be created and distributed by the secretary of state. A third-party organization cannot create and use its own form to register voters, he said.
