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Who cares
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Sponsors
2 Co-sponsors
History
- Referred to rules
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
Title of bill
An act to amend the county law and the state finance law, in relation to indigent defense services
Purpose or general idea of bill
To ensure that all persons accused of crimes in New York are able to receive effective legal representation whether or not they have the ability to pay for a lawyer by establishing a system of direct state funding at the requisite adequate level to eliminate the geographic disparity in representation.
Summary of specific provisions
Section 1: provides legislative findings and declaration.
Section 2: amends Section 722-e of the County law to require the State to reimburse, over a seven year phase in period, counties and cities in which a county is wholly located the full amount of expenses of counsel services for indigent legal defendants.
Section 3: amends subdivision 3 of section 98-b of the state finance law, as amended by section 2 of part E of chapter 56 of the laws of 2010.
Section 4: provides effective date.
Justification
The state has just recently settled a lawsuit with five counties - Suffolk, Washington, Ontario, Onondaga, and Schuyler - in which the settlement calls for the Office of Indigent Legal Services to be in charge of the public defense operations in the five counties. This would be the first time in New York that a statewide entity will be responsible for legal representation of all indigent criminal defendants. Counties statewide are currently responsible for funding indigent legal services by federal mandate but adherence is uneven and dependent on a particular county's ability or inability to properly fund the program. Many counties have no system for supervising caseloads or quality, no staffing formula to ensure an appropriate number of public defenders, and no standard ensuring comparable compensation for defenders.
This legislation would amend the law to provide for the state to take over full funding of the program in 2022, and relieve all counties of this financial strain. As the Governor noted during the State of Opportunity agenda, local governments have been struggling while the state's finances have generally improved. Now is the time for the state to reinvest in its counties and relieve the counties of this unfunded mandate.
Prior legislative history
New Bill
Fiscal implications
To be determined.
Effective date
This act shall take effect April 1, 2017.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.