My thanks to the speaker.
This is a regional counterpart to the
Federal Caseload Relief Act, adopted the 18th instant, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
Regions shall be authorized to develop and implement a written plan that establishes numerical caseload/workload standards for each provider of constitutionally mandated publicly funded representation in criminal cases for people who are unable to afford counsel, provided that annual individual numerical caseload/workload standards may not exceed 367 misdemeanors or 138 felonies, with each felony counting as two and sixty-six hundredths misdemeanors in mixed caseloads.
The reasoning given by the Congress for this act, which I consider to be wholly right and proper, is that the volume of cases assigned to public defenders frequently exceeds what they system may be reasonably expected to bear —with the consequence that public defenders have not sufficient time to prepare cases, and their clients therefore suffer from inadequate representation. During my last tenure as first minister, Frémont adopted the Earl Warren Assistance of Counsel Act which doubled the number of public defenders in Frémont and increased their salary to be competitive with private law firms across our commonwealth. This legislation would continue this vital work by establishing
caseload caps for individual public defenders as recommended by the federal act, with the hiring of additional public defenders necessary to account for these new requirements to be carried out at federal expense.
Are there any questions?