photo by: Journal-World File

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th St., is pictured on Wednesday, April 8, 2020.

Updated at 5:03 p.m. Friday

Douglas County is expected to get a public defender office to provide counsel for indigent felony cases in the near future.

Heather Cessna, executive director for the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services, also known as BIDS, told the Journal-World Friday afternoon that the agency’s board voted to move forward with a plan to install the public defender office in Douglas County.

Cessna said BIDS would now build a budget request for the installation of the office as part of its overall budget. She said she anticipated the agency’s board to vote on the funding during its next meeting on Sept. 10, which is when the board generally considers the agency’s overall budget.

The board’s decision comes about a week after it held a public hearing on the topic at the Lawrence Arts Center, where more than a dozen people called for BIDS to open a public defender office.

Under state law, BIDS is responsible for providing criminal defense to people accused of felony crimes in Kansas but who are unable to afford an attorney. Currently in Douglas County, those cases are handled by a panel of private attorneys who are willing to take on those cases for $100 an hour.

However, there has been a push recently to install a public defender office from the County Commission as well as Gov. Laura Kelly’s Commission on Racial Equity and Justice, which recommended that all counties with more than 100,000 people have such an office.

Douglas County Commission Chair Shannon Portillo told the Journal-World Friday she was excited by the board’s decision. Portillo also serves on Gov. Kelly’s Commission on Racial Equity and Justice.

“I’m thrilled BIDS took the comments from our community seriously, and I am looking forward to this needed reform in our local criminal legal system,” Portillo said in a text message.

With the board’s approval, the Kansas Legislature would still have to agree to fund the office in its 2022 session, Cessna said at the public hearing. With that hurdle and the logistics of hiring staff and establishing an office, it would be 18 to 24 months before the office was functioning, she said.

Additionally, because of the size of the caseload, a Douglas County public defender office would not end BIDS’ use of panel defense attorneys in Douglas County District Court, Cessna said.

“Any place we have a public defenders office, we would still have to have a robust panel of appointed attorneys,” she said. “It’s a supplement, not a replacement.”

Sixteen speakers at the hearing said the opening of a public defender office would be a positive step toward addressing systemic racism in all levels of the criminal justice system and what speaker Sam Allison-Natale said was a system of unequal outcomes for the poor.

“It is said in our legal system you are better off being rich and guilty than poor and innocent,” he said.

Allison-Natale is the chair of the Kansas Holistic Defenders, a nonprofit organization that is poised to become a county-funded public defender office serving clients charged with misdemeanors in Douglas County.