PORT ANGELES — Washington state is “an extreme outlier” when it comes to providing funding for public defense, a Clallam County commissioner said.
Commissioner Mike French’s comment came Monday morning during the legislative update section of the commissioners’ work session.
French told the commissioners about House Bill 1592, which he described as the county’s “vehicle to advance public defense resources to local governments.”
“Our goal, of course, is to get the state at least to 50 percent of the funding for public defense,” French said. “It would be great to get 100 percent. Currently, Washington state is an extreme outlier nationally. We’re one of, I think, only 10 states that don’t at least provide 50 percent of the funding for the public defense system at a statewide level. Many states provide 100 percent.”
The purpose of House Bill 1592, French said, is to get the state onto a pathway toward providing 50 percent of public defense funding to local communities. The bill also calls for the expansion of the Office of Public Defense (OPD) to expand its ability to support counties through regionalized service delivery, meaning, for example, that OPD could provide conflict attorneys to counties.
House Bill 1592 is not likely to move forward though, French said.
“The state legislators that we’ve been really working with on this have said, ‘We don’t want to promise the state to have future obligations,’ and so this section 1, our staff was saying, is basically dead on arrival at this point,” French said.
“We have a couple options with regard to that and so they presented us with, I think, four pathways,” he added. “One was continue advocating for it and even trying to get a hearing so that we can raise these issues in a hearing process, even if we know it’s dead.”
Another pathway is to advocate for the second section of the bill and to seek targeted appropriations this year to get funding to counties to support implementation costs for new caseload standards. That is what the legislative steering committee eventually chose to do. French said he spoke against that move.
French also spoke about Senate Bill 6392, which he said addresses the state’s tort reform.
In the 1980s, there was a decision that prohibited caps on damages determined by juries, saying that a cap takes away a jury’s ability to do its constitutional work.
“It is an existential threat to counties to not have more protection against tort claims,” French said. “The state is finally recognizing that they have that same existential threat.”
Senate Bill 6392 was advanced by state Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, the chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee.
“It basically requires all tort claims against the state and against any of its subdivisions that are subject to civil arbitration for any dollar amount to be subject for that civil arbitration prior to being scheduled for trial,” French said. “So they have to go to arbitration before being scheduled for trial. That is a huge change in the landscape.”
The bill has a good sponsor list in the Senate and was scheduled for a hearing at 8 a.m. today as well as an executive session at 10:30 a.m. Thursday.
“We believe it likely has the support of the governor’s office,” French said. “What we are unclear on is what is its path through the House look like.”
French also mentioned a request from the city of Forks that is being sponsored by state Rep. Adam Bernbaum, D-Port Angeles.
“(Forks) wanted to clarify and expand the uses of lodging tax funding for very small cities,” French said. “I have no idea if it’ll move. I think that it was either 5,000 population or below, if they want to use it for law enforcement and roads, basically.”
Bernbaum crafted House Bill 2270 in response to the city’s request. It would utilize lodging tax revenue for infrastructure and law enforcement costs.
Finally, commissioner Mark Ozias said he had signed up to testify on House Bill 2170, which is the Ecosystem Services bill.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
