More private attorneys have stepped up to represent indigent clients since Maine lawmakers voted this month to nearly double the hourly pay they will receive over the next four months.

But advocates for the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, the independent state-funded group that provides legal services to people who can’t afford an attorney, said on Monday that, along with extending the pay increase beyond this summer, more needs to be done to stabilize the program and meet the state’s constitutional obligations.

Joshua Tardy, the commission’s chair, said recent changes and funding increases have been “transformational” and brought some stability to the program. But, he said, “there’s a lot of work to do.”

“I truly believe that with those past actions, along with this biennial budget process, we are once again positioned to very much bolster and strengthen the delivery of indigent legal services, which has been on the brink of constitutional failure for a while,” Tardy said.

Relatively low pay was causing a precipitous drop in the number of lawyers willing to take on indigent clients for the commission. That was before lawmakers nearly doubled the reimbursement rate for the rest of this fiscal year from $80 an hour to $150 an hour in a supplemental budget approved and signed by the governor. Unless the Legislature and the governor agree to keep the higher rates in place, they will expire at the end of June.

Justin Andrus, the commission’s executive director, said the number of attorneys willing to take on indigent clients rose to 83, up from 59, and that only three clients were awaiting an attorney. The program had a roster of hundreds of participating attorneys as recently as last year.

“Eighty-three is still not enough, but that (increase) is huge,” Andrus said. “That’s 40% in two weeks.”

Justin Andrus, executive director of the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, urged lawmakers to continue the $150 hourly rate for attorneys into the next two-year budget. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

“I have been getting calls all weekend from people who are coming back,” he added.

Until recently, Maine was the only state to not have a public defenders office.

Last year, Gov. Janet Mills included five positions for a mobile defenders unit to take cases in rural areas. Her current biennial budget proposal, which received a pubic hearing before the Legislature’s budget-writing and judiciary committees on Monday, includes an additional $17 million in funding for the commission, including $3.6 million to hire an additional 10 public defenders.

Andrus, who announced last week that he is leaving the commission by the end of June, urged lawmakers on Monday to continue the $150 hourly rate into the next two-year budget, rather than support Mills’ plan, which calls for a tiered reimbursement rate system that would increase reimbursement rates based on the complexity of cases.

Other supporters of the $150 rate included the Maine State Bar Association and the Maine Prosecutors Association, which also supported budget initiatives to address the backlog in the courts and funding for civil legal services, not just criminal.

However, the prosecutors’ association also asked lawmakers to consider additional resources for district attorney offices, saying that any addition of courtrooms, judges or support for defendants also increases the prosecutors’ already unmanageable workloads.

“Think about all three parties,” said Assistant York County District Attorney Shira Burns, who represented the association. “We are all in crisis and we need to expand together.”

Last November, Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill told lawyers at a bar association meeting that the state’s criminal and civil judicial systems were “failing,” the Maine Monitor reported.

Mills said in her State of the Budget address this month that she’s proposed $15 million in additional funding for the courts to hire clerks and marshals to help the courts operate “safely and efficiently.” She’s also proposing four additional district court judgeships to help relieve a backlog of cases and focus on cases like domestic violence, serious crimes and specialty courts.

In addition to supporting the new increased rates, Andrus also called on lawmakers to support creating two fixed locations for public defenders offices, rather than funding only a rural unit. Those offices would focus on appeals and post-conviction reviews, he said.

Last summer, the commission board voted to support a $62.1 million public defense system, which is more than double its current budget of $28.1 million. That proposal called for four new offices; two providing trial services and others providing appeals and post-conviction reviews.

ACLU BACKS EXPANSION

That call was amplified by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, which is suing the state for failing to meet its constitutional obligation to provide adequate and competent legal services to indigent defendants.

Zachary Heiden, the ACLU’s chief policy counsel, called on lawmakers to support creating a public defender’s office in each of the eight court districts, plus the statewide offices for appeals and conviction reviews. He additionally called for more training and oversight of public defenders, as well as maintaining the $150-an-hour pay.

Heiden said the investment is significantly more than previous allocations, but necessary to address what he called “a constitutional crisis” and should be prioritized over other funding requests for “critically important programs.”

“You will hear and read much compelling testimony from many worthy causes over the next few weeks,” Heiden said. “But you will not hear a stronger claim of the state’s obligation to adequate funding than the right to counsel for individuals who are presumed innocent who are accused of crimes and threatened with the loss of liberty.”

The Judiciary Committee will hold a future work session on the budget and issue its recommendations to the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, which is charged with negotiating a final budget deal for the Legislature and governor to consider.