Great News From the Legislative Session

by Heather Cessna, BIDS Executive Director

With the whirlwind of a Legislative session finally over, now is a good time to give everyone an update on the fantastic strides we’ve made during this year’s legislative session in support of Kansas Public Defense.

The big news is that Governor Kelly recommended and the Legislature approved our $3.9 million dollar request for an all-agency pay scale adjustment to provide our employees with closer pay parity with prosecutors and other comparable government salaries. Parity of resources is fundamental to constitutionally effective defense services and working towards pay parity between public defenders and prosecutors is a key part of that resource equation. Here’s a HUGE shout-out to everyone who worked with us to help make our funding request a reality!

We worked with our Board and the Kansas Department of Administration to finalize and implement a new pay scale. We are planning to have a few Zoom sessions after the Independence Day holiday to answer some common questions, and talk about how this fits into our larger plan to offer consistent raises and clear paths to promotion. Watch your email for those dates!

But that’s not all! In addition to funding our pay scale adjustment, the Legislature and Governor also gave us additional funding to again raise our assigned counsel rate in response to severe shortages of assigned counsel in many areas of our state. Funding for our assigned counsel is always important in order to ensure that all of our clients are able to have an attorney by their side, even in jurisdictions where there are no public defender offices or where our offices are too overloaded with cases to continue taking clients.

Lastly, part of our budget this year also included additional funding for agency infrastructure upgrades. Many of you may have already noticed our upgrade to Westlaw Edge, which is thanks to that additional funding. Within the next few months, we will also be rolling out additional licensing for background checks for our investigators and will be looking at additional office space for some of our offices that are in need of expansion.

This is the second year in a row that the Governor and Legislature have made substantial investments in public defense, and we look forward to continuing to work with them in future budget years to address our ongoing needs.

To be clear, we still have A LOT of work to do. We did not receive any requested funding for new public defender positions, and we continue to face a severe shortage of assigned counsel as we struggle to meet the needs of our clients and the volume of cases filed by prosecutors across the state. But these additional investments in public defense will have a positive impact on our public defenders and defense staff, our private assigned counsel, and ultimately on our ability to represent our clients.

Thank you to all of you who have supported our mission of providing zealous and dignified public defense along the way. I look forward to working with all of you to continue advocating for fully funded public defense in Kansas!