Chief defender disputes claim that millions of excess dollars have been spent on counsel
SANTA CRUZ — Chief Public Defender Larry Biggam said his office is doing a good, affordable job — representing court-appointed criminal defendants — after the Santa Cruz County civil grand jury on Thursday accused the county of mismanaging the legal-firm’s increasing costs.
“When a county does not track contractor performance, and the contractor is a highly skilled professional negotiator, costs rise,” the grand jury wrote in its report alleging the defense contracts actually have misled county leaders.
Biggam defended his office, which has been the contracted legal counsel for indigent clients — people who can’t afford an attorney — for almost 45 years.
“It’s not popular defending poor people accused of crimes,” Biggam said. “We obviously agree with this report when it says ‘…by all accounts, they are very good at what they do. No concerns about the quality of public defender contractor services have come to this grand jury’s attention.'”
The grand jury has legal authority to examine special districts, and city and county governments. The panel is comprised of county residents “in promoting government accountability,” according to the Judicial Branch of California.
“The grand jury found that the county pays the public defense contractors large separate overhead subsidies that county leaders tend to overlook and that the county has not appreciated the expense of the contracts in the long term,” according to the report: “Santa Cruz County’s Public Defense Contracts: How Complex Contracts Misled County Leaders.”
The report also accuses the county of overlooking rising expenses from the public defender’s office. But the firm, through Biggam, claims it isn’t charging more than comparable public defense rates.
“Because the county does not track the case assignment data it collects, the county has not noticed that the main contractor’s compensation has risen on average 4.12% per year for 20 years while total case assignments for the same period have fallen on average 1.09% per year,” according to the report.
Biggam countered that claim.
“We strongly disagree, however, with the finding that we have cost the county any unnecessary expense over our many years,” Biggam said. “Comparing our costs with other Bay Area public offices would confirm that we have saved the county millions of dollars over the course of our run as the contract defenders for Santa Cruz.”
The report accuses the County Administrative Office of having inadequate resources needed to manage “major contracts,” such as the public defense contracts.
“Negotiating multi-year, fixed price contracts for public defender services has cost the county several millions of dollars and created a windfall for public defense contractors,” according to the report.
Yet the report found it difficult for the County Administrative Office to be “critical of the public defense contractors when everyone says they are doing a great job,” Biggam pointed out.
June 28, 2019
Santa Cruz Sentinel
By Michael Todd
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