The Hockley County Commissioners met during their regularly scheduled meeting last Monday at the Hockley County Court House.
Moving quickly through normal business items, the court wrapped up their meeting with a presentation of a planning study regarding the High Plains Regional Public Defender Offices by Scott Ehler, director of public defense improvement with Texas Indigent Defense Commission.
Unable to make the meeting, the presentation was done through zoom.
Ehler explained that the purpose of the study and the TIDC is to fund, oversee and improve public defense in Texas.
The TIDC’s Improvement Team provides counties with planning studies to inform the court about the costs, benefits and decisions that need to be made to establish regional public defender’s offices.
Ehler also added that the research and experience have shown that public defender offices can improve indigent defense quality, constitutional compliance, accountability and budget predictability.
They can also improve efficiency and reduces costs for other parts of criminal justice system, including jail and court operations.
The planning study given to the court included 13 counties in a potential regional public defender office.
The counties included, Bailey, Briscoe, Castro, Cochran, Dickens, Floyd, Hale, Hockley, Motely, Parmer, Swisher, Terry and Yoakum.
Additional background as to when the planning study began work dates back to January 2021. The TDIC developed a planning study for a regional public defender office encompassing Cochran, Hockley, Terry and Yoakum Counties.
The study was developed at the request of Hockley County District Judge Pat Phelan, who expressed an interest in increasing the supply of attorneys who would represent indigent defendants, improve the quality of indigent defense and reduce jail costs. A grant application to establish that office was not submitted because there were concerns about the office raising costs to the counties.
In March 2022, the TDIC developed another planning study that included 11 counties such as: Bailey, Castro, Cochran, Crosby, Hale, Hockley, Lamb, Parmer, Swisher, Terry and Yoakum. That was followed with three planning study revisions with different county combinations within the region.
In the current planning study, all 13 counties in the planning study have populations less than 100,000, making then eligible for TDIC sustainability funding, 80 percent in year one and 66 percent in year two and beyond.
The scope of the planning study has the office representing 80 percent of indigent misdemeanor, noncapital felony, juvenile and appellate cases.
The recommended number of staff is set at 19 while the salary model assumes salary parity with the district and county attorney offices. However, the salary levels may need to be raised to attract and retain attorneys, compete with salary levels in Lubbock and public defender offices in New Mexico and offices in other parts of Texas.
Ehler explained that smaller and rural counties are struggling to find and retain attorneys even with attorneys fresh out of schooling.
While numbers for salary’s, conducting business and extra expenses were included in the planning study, Ehler cautioned the court to take those numbers with a grain of salt as they were compiled before the pandemic.
With rising costs for almost everything since the start of the pandemic, Ehler was confident those numbers offered were not entirely wrong, but they could use some adjusting.
Hockley County Judge Sharla Baldrige offered her thoughts on the process following the presentation.
Bladridge explained that smaller counties are feeling the effects of not having enough attorney power to keep the judicial process going smoothly and in turn that also affects the indigent cases quality of representation.
While Hockley County has felt those affects to some point, Baldridge feels that the county sits in a better position than most in the area.
As a result, the county is doing their due diligence weighing the pros and cons of entering such a group.
With the solution to hire a group of attorneys, that is also the tall task in addition to retaining said hires.
During the presentation, Ehlers explained that the timeline for the office to full functioning could not be in effect until March of next year, possibly.
Ehlers added that that is an optimistic timeline and he’s seen where the office could be functioning sooner or later depending on the process of hiring a chief attorney first then filling the remaining staffing spots.
Baldridge revisited that point and added that is a tough ask for the counties to wait that long before they can get the ball rolling.
However, Baldridge said there will be more conversations had about joining the group and making sure that everyone feels comfortable with decision or at least having a proper way out of the group if things do not go as planned.
While it may seem like an uphill battle trying to get the office fully staff and getting the process put in place, Baldridge believes it may be necessary for the future of rural counties such as this region in order to improve the overall quality of the system.