By JIM BUTLER
State Public Defender Remy Starnes has notified Natchitoches Parish public defender Brett Brunson in Natchitoches Parish and several other parishes’ Chief Defenders their contracts will not be renewed in July.
The other 32 district defenders were advised last week their status is under review, according to a report by Louisiana Illuminator.
The primary bone that Starnes is picking is whether he should control salary setting for the local defenders.
According to the Rapides office annual legislative audit report, that contains no adverse findings, Fuller was paid $104,638 in the fiscal year ending last June 30.
Contract attorneys were paid a total of $918,000 to defend clients (About nine of 10 persons accused of crimes in Louisiana are represented by public defenders).
The office’s General fund received $958,000 in state funding and $495,000 from local judicial fees.
Fuller and the others getting pink slips have been in the lead opposing Starns and his legislative efforts to wrest control from the local level.
That began after his appointment by former Gov. John Bel Edwards and continues following his reappointment last year by Jeff Landry.
(By law, Starns is paid the same salary as an associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, about $190,009.)
Last year, Starns and Landry helped pass a bill to weaken the state public defender board and strengthen his influence, according to Louisiana Illuminator.
According to that report:
The new law dissolved the old state public defender board, which had to approve the hiring and firing of district defenders. Instead, a new public defender oversight board the governor controls has been put in place.
The new board doesn’t have the authority to directly hire or fire district defenders. Instead, most of that power has been transferred to Starns.
In 2023, the previous state public defender board put a standardized compensation plan in place for district defenders that Starns believes was too generous.
At the time, board members said they were trying to make up for the fact that district defenders hadn’t received a pay increase or cost of living adjustment in at least 16 years.
After board members voted to increase the pay, Starns helped push through the legislation that dissolved the first public defender board and set up a new panel.
But the second board has also voted to overrule Starns twice and keep the old board’s pay scale for district defenders in place.
The pay proposal Starns pushed as an alternative would have cut some district defenders’ pay by tens of thousands of dollars annually.
Legislators had also put some measures in place to try to prevent Starns from firing district defenders – at least in the short term. The new law blocked him from getting rid of anyone in that position without cause until July 2025.
Earlier this month, Starns sought an opinion from Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office stating that he could unilaterally end district defender contracts this summer when they expire.
“There is no right to a hearing or an investigation if the annual contract is simply not renewed,” Assistant Attorney General Chimene St. Amant wrote in the memo of opinion.
