Court-appointed lawyers in county to get higher fees

The new rates should
expedite criminal justice, lawyer says.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — The standoff has been resolved between the Mahoning County Bar Association and the county commissioners over hourly fees for court-appointed lawyers for indigent defendants in criminal cases.

The fees will be phased in over the next few years.

For 22 years, the fees have been $30 out of court and $40 in court, which last year were the lowest in the state.

The new fees, unanimously adopted by the commissioners Thursday, are $40 and $50, retroactive to Jan. 1 this year; $45 and $55 effective Jan. 1, 2009; and $50 and $60, effective Jan. 1, 2010.

“This was a compromise, and the phase-in was at the request of the county commissioners,’’ said Atty. J. Gerald Ingram, bar association president. “The economic realities in this community required a phase-in.”

The bar association had proposed $50 and $60, effective immediately.

The old rates were woefully inadequate to meet the expenses of operating a law practice, Ingram said.

“We were running perilously close to not having even an adequate supply of lawyers to handle the cases,” county Administrator George Tablack said, with Ingram concurring.

After the commissioners voted, Ingram said he would restore his name to the list of lawyers willing to take court-appointed cases and encouraged his colleagues to do likewise.

By enticing more lawyers to take court-appointed cases, the new rates should expedite justice, Ingram told the commissioners.

Ingram said he was dropping the threat he made last fall that the bar association might urge the state to withhold from the county $300,000 a year in state funds for indigent representation if the commissioners didn’t enact adequate rates within a reasonable time.

Commissioner John A. McNally, a lawyer, and Tablack said judges can help the county control its indigent representation costs by thoroughly screening defendants to determine which ones are truly indigent and need court-appointed lawyers.

Fueled by the local crime rate and the police response to it, the county spent $1.8 million on indigent defense last year, which was $500,000 more than it spent for this purpose in 2006.

The county will likely have to add money to the $1.85 million it has budgeted from its general fund this year for indigent defense, Tablack said. In December, he predicted higher fees for defense lawyers could push this year’s cost to $2.6 million.

milliken@vindy.com