Missouri lawmakers consider spending Medicaid expansion dollars on public defenders

After rejecting funding for Medicaid expansion, House lawmakers are considering using part of the money to allow the state to hire 15 more attorneys for its overloaded public defender system.

That would cost the state $1 million and be in addition to the $820,000 for 12 new public defenders included in the state budget that the House passed last week to alleviate public defender waiting lists across the state.

The system has been the subject of lawsuits, most recently one filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center. That suit alleged it was unconstitutional that people charged with crimes are forced to wait for months and sometimes years, often while in jail, before they are assigned a public defender.

Cole County Circuit Judge William Hinkle last month agreed, ruling that the waiting lists and delays violate “the obligations of the State to furnish counsel to allow for adequate representation at critical stages and at trial.”

About 2,000 defendants across Missouri are currently waiting for a public defender, in violation of their rights to be represented by an attorney, Hinkle ruled. When the lawsuit was filed in February 2020, the waiting list was more than double that.

The additional funds are being considered as part of a package of budget proposals filed by House Budget chairman Cody Smith, a Carthage Republican, after House Republicans excluded funding for a voter-approved Medicaid expansion plan from the budget.

Smith’s proposals primarily direct the $128 million of state funds that would have been spent on the expansion toward other social services such as mental health treatments and care for the developmentally disabled.

Mary Fox, director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, said hiring 27 public defenders would alleviate the current waiting lists but not eliminate the need for them altogether. Under the proposal, two new attorneys would be hired in Cass County, where two criminal defendants were among those who sued the state over the waiting lists last year.

Public defender offices across the state are struggling with caseloads, Fox said, estimating her office would need to hire 53 attorneys to eliminate the chances of waiting lists existing at all.

Fox attributed the shortfall to an influx in drug possession and property crime charges brought by prosecutors.

“I believe the driver is addiction and mental health issues,” she said to the House Budget Committee on Tuesday.

Some lawmakers questioned whether the office would need the additional attorneys after the backlogs are cleared in the future. Budget Vice Chairman Dirk Deaton, a Noel Republican, called the proposal for 27 attorneys “a sizable number.”

The lawsuit has been stayed until July to allow the legislature time to put money toward the public defender problem. Fox said if waiting lists are not eliminated when Hinkle returns to the case, he could order the state to hire private attorneys to represent defendants at twice the cost of public defenders.

“I would anticipate that if we do not resolve the need for additional attorneys at each of our trial offices that we will be back next year with additional litigation from someone,” Fox said.

The request for 15 additional attorneys is one of several items whose fates are caught in an acrimonious budgetary debate over Medicaid expansion.

Democrats still hope the Senate will take the $128 million and put it back into the state budget for expansion, while Smith said he hopes to get his alternative proposals passed and sent to the Senate swiftly.

A November 2019 investigation by The Star found the public defender system routinely fails poor defendants by providing inadequate representation that falls short of basic constitutional guarantees