You can’t complain about being underpaid if you don’t ask for a raise.

That’s the idea behind a movement that began this week among court-appointed defense attorneys in Douglas County. Some of the attorneys plan to start billing the county $80 per hour each time they submit a voucher at the end of a misdemeanor criminal case.

That’s $30 an hour more than the county currently pays.

The $50 rate, which the Douglas County Commission refused to increase this year, hasn’t gone up since 1988.

And it amounts to $10 an hour once attorneys pay overhead costs of running a law office, such as rent and utilities. A recent survey by the state found the typical attorney spent about $40 per hour on such costs.

By submitting a bill based on what they believe is a fair pay rate, the attorneys aim to force judges to either turn it down or approve it.

“The idea being very simply that you want to foreclose the argument that you didn’t ask,” said Lawrence attorney Craig Stancliffe, who researched the issue for the local defense bar. “This is something that attorneys have to do all the time: You have to put the ball in somebody else’s court.”

A legal motion the attorneys plan to submit with their claims alleges that the county is running afoul of a 1989 Kansas Supreme Court decision that requires the rate to be fair and to be revisited each year. Attorneys’ pay has remained stagnant as other public employees have received cost-of-living increases.

Attorneys’ fees in felony cases are paid by the state’s Board of Indigents Defense Services, also at $50 per hour. The county picks up the tab for misdemeanor cases and budgets a fixed amount each year based on the $50 rate.

If judges agree to pay the $80 rate, it would cause the court to use more quickly the money county commissioners budgeted for this year. The court could ask the county for additional money, but County Administrator Craig Weinaug said he didn’t think they’d be likely to get it.

Commissioners declined to raise the $50 rate this year largely because the state pays only $50 for felonies. But the reason the state doesn’t pay more is that the Legislature, too, has been unwilling to shell out money for a raise.

It is the second legal challenge in the past month regarding defense attorneys’ pay. Attorney Greg Robinson has asked a Douglas County judge to pay him in full after the state cut $5,000 off the bill he submitted for a second-degree murder case.

Stancliffe said he didn’t know how many Lawrence attorneys would take part in the movement. At least one of the motions has been filed so far.

The chief judge of the district court, Robert Fairchild, is on vacation and couldn’t be reached for comment about what judges plan to do about the requests.

Stancliffe said attorneys would decide independently how to proceed once the judges made their decisions. Stancliffe said he didn’t know why attorneys didn’t take this approach sooner.

“I kick myself for that,” he said. “People are just too busy. How would you like to have to sue for your salary every year?”