The highest official within the Montana Workplace of the State Public Defender will retire on the of the June, because the authorized battle over the company’s current delays in assigning counsel to defendants continues within the state Supreme Courtroom.
Rhonda Lindquist will retire June 30 after 4 years with the company, in line with press launch issued Tuesday. Growth and operations bureau chief Brett Schandelson will take the lead because the appearing director of OPD in the course of the seek for Lindquist’s alternative.
“Rhonda has devoted her life to public service, and I respect all she has executed to modernize OPD, resolve challenges the workplace has confronted, and guarantee all Montanans’ constitutional proper to counsel is protected,” Division of Administration Director Misty Ann Giles mentioned within the launch. “Because the state recruits and hires a brand new OPD director, Brett will oversee the workplace’s operations.”
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The Division of Administration, beneath which the general public defenders workplace is housed, will rent Lindquist’s alternative. Belinda Adams, spokesperson for the division, mentioned in an e mail Tuesday the transition won’t have an effect on the company’s Supreme Courtroom case, and the division will start recruiting for Lindquist’s place inside the subsequent week.
“OPD represents people most in want of assist and gives critically wanted accountability to the justice system,” Lindquist mentioned within the launch. “I’m humbled to have been part of this wonderful company, and I’ll miss it. However after a protracted profession in public service, it’s time for me to step again, and I do know the company is in nice palms transferring ahead.”
Lindquist was named director of the state public defenders workplace in 2018, a place created in a package deal of reform payments handed by the state Legislature a 12 months earlier. That laws changed a fee atop the company with a director to supervise the 4 divisions inside OPD.
The shake-up adopted the work of a activity drive in 2015 meant to handle current budgetary and operational issues. Earlier than that 2017 session, the division’s chairman and chief administrator had resigned following a monetary audit that discovered the company was $3.5 million over funds. In current months, Lindquist helped safe larger pay for public defenders and contract attorneys.
Whereas OPD’s turbulence largely continued, the 2021 Legislature was the primary time in 15 years the company got here to the session with out having to ask for supplemental funding, usually executed when an company overspends its funds set by lawmakers two years earlier. Nevertheless, by the top of the 2021 session, OPD returned to the legislative funds committee asking for a further $850,000 to assist squash the rising caseload pileup largely bottlenecked by the COVID-19 pandemic’s slowdown within the court docket system. Lawmakers declined the funding request.
Whereas the company reported being hamstrung with its current funds, a Yellowstone County District Courtroom choose held the company and Lindquist in contempt in September after studying greater than 650 defendants had not been assigned public protection. The company paid $15,500 in fines imposed by the court docket, however later failed to fulfill Decide Donald Harris’ order to assign attorneys to indigent defendants inside three days, and in November the choose held Lindquist and the company in contempt once more.
The company challenged Harris’ second contempt order in court docket, arguing the choose can not sanction an underfunded company into compliance. Harris has stood by his order within the case earlier than the Supreme Courtroom, which stays ongoing.
The company lastly moved the needle on its wages for attorneys after a gaggle of contract attorneys introduced in April they’d now not take instances on behalf of OPD because of a better pay fee afforded to contract attorneys in Yellowstone County, the place the company’s wants are highest. In late April, OPD introduced contract attorneys would obtain a statewide bump from $56 per hour to $71 per hour. The following day, OPD and the general public defenders’ union agreed to an $11,000 pay hike for brand new workers, maybe the most important funding within the company’s historical past.
“Making prudent, accountable investments in public protection is an funding in our justice system and in making certain our constitutionally assured rights are upheld,” Lindquist mentioned on the time.
Previous to her being named director at OPD, Lindquist, a Helena native, was the centralized companies administrator for the Governor’s Workplace within the Bullock administration, the place she was concerned in coverage, communications, monetary administration and strategic planning.
Schandelson, who will start serving as OPD’s appearing director on July 1, spent a decade in litigation follow earlier than becoming a member of the company in 2018. He graduated from the College of Montana College of Regulation in 2008.
“OPD is in an awesome spot, with a stable construction and basis,” mentioned Schandelson. “We’ve bought extra work to do, however we’ve bought a plan, an awesome crew, and probably the most compassionate, hardest-working workers and contractors within the state.”
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