Alaska public defender shortage will grow worse without action, budget documents indicate

Alaska’s shortage of public defenders, which is already delaying criminal cases in rural Alaska, will likely grow worse because of a new law, budget documents indicate.

The shortage, first reported in depth by the Anchorage Daily News on Thursday, has already caused public defenders to begin refusing cases in Nome and Bethel.

“The public defenders are strapped pretty badly,” Chief Justice Daniel Winfree, head of the Alaska Court System, said Wednesday.

“Staffing, particularly in the Public Defender Agency, is in crisis,” he said.

Material submitted Thursday to the House Finance Committee indicates that a bill which modernized the definition of sexual assault in order to protect victims will also create a significantly greater workload for public defenders.

“This legislation will result in a significant increase in sexual assault cases filed and increase litigation in these cases,” the documents state.

The material was submitted as part of the state’s $105 million supplemental budget, an annual request by the state administration to the Legislature to retroactively cover those costs that weren’t funded in the budget passed the previous year.

The supplemental budget calls for $833,000 more for the state Public Defender Agency and $2.3 million for the Office of Public Advocacy but doesn’t include any additional positions.

Both offices supply attorneys in criminal cases to defendants who cannot afford to hire an attorney themselves.

“These legal agencies are already understaffed and experiencing difficulty with recruitment and retention due to the high stress environment. The increase in serious felony level case filings continues while agency attorneys and staff face a mounting backlog of cases post trial suspensions because of the pandemic,” the documents state.

Neil Steininger, director of the state Office of Management and Budget, said legislative budgeters failed to account for the new demand on public defenders last year because the Legislature passed the bill at the last minute and the legislation was result of two bills being combined.

It remains to be seen how the legislature will address the pre-existing shortage of public defenders, which could create a constitutional problem for the state.

Lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy last year approved pay increases for state attorneys and other employees.

The governor’s amended budget for Fiscal Year 2024 — which governs spending after June 30 — will be released in mid-February, and state lawmakers are expected to create their own version of the budget afterward.

Winfree said in this week’s State of the Judiciary address that the Alaska Court System is considering whether to expand the number of hearings held online, and he said in a subsequent interview that doing so could help the strain on public defenders.