Here is the latest communique from the “semi-independent agency” that manages line items 0321-1510 [payment for private attorneys who accept court appointments] and line item 0321-1520 – vendors to such attorneys, such as copy shops and experts [and the 2018 budget will not be good to fund 7/1/17, either] – so we are working, billing, and for some, pulling from retirement or taking loans:
Committee for Public Counsel Services
Dear CPCS Private Assigned Counsel,
We are reaching out to you today to provide an update on the status of available funds to pay all bills for services rendered in Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17).
The Committee for Public Counsel Services currently has sufficient funding for only a portion of the regularly scheduled payment to private bar attorneys which will be transmitted in the state’s accounting system on June 22nd. The funds which are available will be expended for bills received and in good order on a first-received, first-paid basis; we will need supplemental funding to pay bills for which there is currently insufficient funding available.
Please know that we are working diligently with both the Governor’s Administration and the Legislature to secure the much needed additional funding to cover FY17 bills. We will update you with further information as it becomes available.
Thank you for your patience and for your critical work on behalf of our clients.
Committee for Public Counsel Services
44 Bromfield Street
Boston, MA 02108
But wait — our Republican governor and our Democratic speaker of the house told us that no new taxes are necessary. I don’t understand, it sounds like the Commonwealth once again CANNOT PAY the bills it has incurred. In the private sector, the next step is to send the miscreant to collections.
This is patent nonsense, revealing yet again the way our legislators — Republican and Democrat alike — LIE to us.
Massachusetts does not have enough funds to meet its obligations. We need new tax revenue — NOW.
With all due respect to the good work that Amber and others like her do, “Let’s raise taxes to pay some lawyers” is a tough sell.
I see it as a budgetary problem. Sell some of the tanks the police have, and pay the lawyers.
Without going into the issue of tax increases in isolation, we have to bite the bullet; Specifically we have to come to terms with the fact that the Commonwealth traditionally and explicitly prioritizes elite indulgence and corporate welfare over human services in the State’s budget.
Per the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center:
This goes more to matters of institutional culture than budgetary constraints.
Perhaps I was unclear. I agree with you about the misplaced priorities of our culture and government.
Still, these attorneys performed services that the state agreed to pay for. They should be paid for those services. No excuses, no rationalizations, no hand-waving.
….and this is not limited to the Ledge, consider the following in the context of privatized human services in the Commonwealth:
I profoundly disagree The time for the discussion you’re suggesting is BEFORE, not after, the attorneys are asked to their work.
It is irresponsible for GOP political terrorists in Washington to refuse to pay debts that they already voted to have the nation incur. It is equally irresponsible for our local government officials to pay these obligations.
In my view, when the Commonwealth asks an attorney to work for the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth commits itself to pay for that work. Period.
My suggestion for AmberPaw and all the other attorneys is to stop this work today.
No pay — no work.
Just to avoid confusion on this issue (since we just posted past each other), we should remember that, while the Commonwealth pays for theses services, the clients are the poor.
I understand.
This is an aspect of why this is so despicable. The compensation rate for these attorneys is already obscenely low — they do the work because they care about social justice, not because of the money.
Actions like this create a Hobson’s choice — do the work pro-bono, or don’t do the work at all.
The reason I think they should not do the work at all is that doing so only enables more of this obscene exploitation, and therefore perpetuates and accelerates already unacceptable government behavior.
But refusing to do the work is really hard when it means no longer helping your client get his or her kid back from the custody of the Department of Children and Families.
No doubt. I’m reminded of the dilemma faced by parents when their children are kidnapped. It’s an obscene dilemma, and we treat kidnappers very harshly.
Our government — Mr. DeLeo and Mr. Baker alike — are holding these innocents hostage to their self-serving refusal to raise taxes.
There’s a constitutional catch-22 here, it seems. If there are no lawyers to represent the indigent, the defendant does not get the right to have counsel appointed to him as the Miranda Warning states. If the state tries to force lawyers to work for little or nothing, that could constitute slavery or involuntary servitude. If a court tries to force a state to pay for lawyers, that would seem to violate the separation of powers since the power of the purse belongs to the legislature. I’m honestly not sure how to resolve this.
In the LaValee case, the SJC resolved that ANY attorney could be ordered to accept a case whether they wished it or not, or were on a “list” or not. These are not only criminal cases. They are Children Requiring Assistance [CRA cases], Care and Protection cases involving appointment to represent children and parents where the state has removed children, involuntary commitment to mental institutions, See: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/442/442mass228.html and see also Rosemary Cooper’s case – she fought being appointed at age 65 plus, with cancer, over objection and on 13th amendment involuntary servitude grounds and was told the Court could appoint her without her permission AND without prompt or adequate payment see: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/447/447mass513.html My kids said they didn’t want to be attorneys because I work too hard and am treated so poorly.
I find it simply obscene that the state refuses to pay you and your colleagues. A court that can issue such orders surely can also order that said attorneys be paid.
I know that as an employer (many years ago), my accountant and attorney each were very clear that I MUST ensure that my company paid my employees their salary. They explained that as president and CEO, I was personally responsible for ensuring that they were paid — if the company did not issue payroll checks, or if those checks bounced, then a constable would arrive at my door and freeze all my personal assets until my employees were paid.
Every citizen has a right to counsel. Every attorney has a right to be paid for services compelled by the Commonwealth.
This is preposterous and obscene.
So who is president and CEO of the state in this metaphor? The gut response is of course the Governor, but the state is different from a business in that the legislature has to approve. There are a whole host of constitutional reasons freezing their personal assets would be problematic to say the least.
I fear from your response that you are mired in the mud, and missing the point. In fact, it is not JUST the president and CEO who has the personal exposure in private business, it is every corporate officer and director.
The point is that private business MUST pay its employees for work done. Period.
The state is required to hire these attorneys. In my view, the state is also required to pay them. I’m not suggesting that the personal assets of government officials be frozen.
I AM suggesting that state assets be frozen until these obligations are paid.
Those private attorneys who accept court appointed cases [or who are appointed to them without being asked, actually, in many cases] are NOT employees. The line item designated to pay for court appointments, 0321-1510 , is considered a “1099” line item – non employee compensation to “independent contractors.” Of course, we are independent contractors, so called, who have been told we cannot say no. There is no paid sick time. There is no paid vacation time. There are no taxes with held from compensation. So, Somerville Tom, the citizens of the Commonwealth are the employer and the State simply wrings as much out of the dedicated attorneys who do this work as it can to get citizens the most labor for their dollar – and if it means sometimes attorneys wait till November to be paid for work done in June, the “Democratic” legislature as a whole does not seem to care at all. Yes. It is a hardship, and attorneys are constantly walking away and there is a constant shortage of attorneys trained to do the work. Surprise, yes?
AmberPaw, I feel your pain.
This is an absolutely outrageous situation. Sounds like indentured servitude to me.
Oh, and by the way — when private industry, such as my software industry, tried to treat programmers this way (moving them from employees to “independent contractors”), the state and feds were eager and quick to put a stop to it.
Specifically — you mention “no taxes withheld from compensation”. These abuses of the 1099-vs-w2 are aggressively pursued by the state when done by private businesses.
This abuse happens because our “Democrats” in the legislature allow it to happen.
OK, but I still wonder by what constitutional authority and am concerned that innocent people would be hurt if the state had no access to money.
Christopher – I cited to two Supreme Judicial Court cases in this thread that give the purported “constitutional authority’ for the abuse of the indigent defense bar by the Massachusetts legislature. Have you taken the time to read them since I took the time to post them? I am referring to the LaVallee and Cooper decisions. Here they are again, just for you [well and whomever else] as links: 1 Cooper decision by the SJC: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/447/447mass513.html and 2) LaVallee decision by the SJC: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/442/442mass228.html Please read both of these. Your questions are answered, heinously & cravenly, but answered. The SJC was also far more interested in making the legislature – and the general fund – happy then in small potatoes attorneys who represent the indigent.
Yes, I saw those the first time, but my question was who and by what authority can state assets be frozen. I’d be interested in your solution that would constitutionally and simultaneously satisfy all three of the following requirements:
Indigent persons receiving adequate legal defense.
Attorneys representing them being timely and appropriately compensated.
The legislature retaining its authority to set the state budget.
I’m similarly interested in your solution that satisfies all three.
What we’re doing right now accomplishes only the third. The Court seems to have no constitutional issues with utterly disregarding the second.
I am not a lawyer, I do not even play a lawyer on television. It seems to me that the legion of lawyers who operate our government collectively have the ability to find or create a solution.
I think it is our job and my job to demand that they do so.
The third is actually the one I’d discard if I absolutely had to because the other two are matters of fundamental fairness and justice.
Spot on, Tom. The problem is that the “undeserving poor” and by implication those who provide the so-called undeserving poor [one more lovely term inherited from the Puritians] have no constituency and other folks are willing to look the other way and let the so-called undeserving poor and anyone who serves them, suffer. The fact that all it takes is bad health or bad luck and folks can find themselves indigent [some anyway], and that many were born to ill health and extreme poverty seems to create little or no compassion or commitment. So, yes, a constituency is needed. In 2003-2005 I but hundreds of hours into that, but at this point I am 69. I have two hip repalcements, a dead husband and am tired. I am willing to post about it and write a few letters. That is as much energy as I now have – besides working to serve this population. I almost retired in 2015 when my left hip collapsed, but a judge’s secretary called me and said, “They just brought in a 13 year old who was there when her mother was murdered. I am trying to find an attorney to accept the appointment to help her through the guardianship process.” I could not say no – and so back into the trenches I went.
With no FY 18 budget and no Supp Budget for FY 17 we court appointed attorneys could go unpaid in theory until December. You all know that happened in 2003 – no pay from June until November. That is why in 2005 I went largely into private work. I am back doing mostly court appointments because, frankly, the need is so great and these cases, the children and family law cases, are both life and death and hands on; a true marriage of prayer and legal work for me. Without going into the losses experienced in my personal life, I will just say it is the legal work I care about so even though those that govern the Commonwealth of Massachusetts do not treat court appointed attorneys with respect, I do the work because I do the work for suffering human beings not governors and legislators. The shortage of attorneys willing to represent children and parents is also becoming dire because those with student loans to pay cannot afford going unpaid, even unpaid at the disrespectful rates, and leave after a few years. If they continue to accept court appointments even for “a few years” that is. For as long as I am physically and mentally able to do this work, and do it well, I will continue to do so because it matters so much.