State Public Defender seeks more funding for 2025

The office of the State Public Defender will ask Idaho legislators to approve more than $16 million in supplementary funding for the coming fiscal year.

Christopher Lehosit, a budget and policy analyst for several state offices, went before the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee to outline the State Public Defender’s supplementary funding request Tuesday. 

The ask includes $16.3 million to bolster the office’s $49 million budget for fiscal year 2025 and pay for primary and conflict contract attorneys, as well as contract investigators, capital litigation costs and other overhead costs. 

The state office will also request a little more than $226,000 to establish new institutional public defense offices in Shoshone, Benewah, Elmore and Jerome counties. 

The State Public Defender exists because of a 2015 lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Idaho on behalf of indigent defendants, which alleged that Idaho’s public defense system was inadequate. At that time, each county managed its own public defense services. 

As the case wound through the courts for years, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a bill into law in 2022 that moved public defense funding from the county level to the state level. In 2023, he signed a bill that established the State Public Defender. This February, a district judge dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit. 

The state office went into effect Oct. 1. 

Rep. Clay Handy, R-Burley, asked how the state office has performed since then. 

“Is it doing what we wanted it to do?” he asked. “Are we having better results and fewer complaints?” 

Lehosit said it’s too soon to tell. 

“Time is something we’re going to need a little more of,” he said. “We really only have a month and a half of data.” 

In Kootenai County, the institution of the statewide office has led to an exodus of public defenders, as well as private attorneys who used to handle indigent defense on a contract basis when there was a conflict of interest or when caseloads were full. 

Just 11 attorneys work in the Kootenai County office; a fully-staffed office would have 26 public defenders. A total of six private attorneys have contracted with the state to handle public defense cases in Kootenai County, compared to more than 30 who contracted with the county before the new system went into effect. 

Because of the shortage of public defenders, some indigent defendants have appeared in Kootenai County courtrooms without a specific public defender assigned to their case and prepared to represent them.

Last week, First District Judge Robert Caldwell called a hearing to address four such cases, saying he’s “never seen anything like it” in his nearly 16 years on the bench. 

Jay Logsdon, the lead public defender for the First District, said in court that he was “heartbroken” by the state of public defense in Kootenai County and emphasized the dearth of attorneys to do the work. 

“I don’t know that there’s going to be a solution until somebody changes the rules, in terms of what they’re willing to pay those contract attorneys, and the only people who can make those decisions are down in Boise,” Logsdon said.