Virginia public defenders are asking for raises to keep salaries on par with prosecutors. It’s brought mixed results in Hampton Roads.

Meredith Cramer loves her work as an assistant public defender in Hampton.

A few weeks ago, she handled the bond hearing for a past client, a woman with a mental illness now charged with misdemeanor assault. Cramer told a judge about the woman’s history, and the judge allowed her out on an unsecured bond rather than jailing her pending trial.

“She was so at ease as soon as she saw me,” Cramer said. “That just made me feel good, like I’m doing something that’s helping someone.”

But Cramer — a mother of two who’s worked in public defense work for 12 years — is leaving within the month to take a job at a private local civil litigation firm. She will start the new gig at $120,000 a year, nearly doubling her $62,000 pay at the public defender’s office.

“It’s hard to say no to that,” she said of the raise. “Altruistically, you want to do something that makes your heart feel good, and is good for the community. But at some point, you have a family, and you have to think about them.”

Cramer’s story isn’t uncommon. Experienced public defenders have long left for greener pastures — either in private law firms or local prosecutor’s offices — because the pay can’t keep up.

To stave off the exodus of public defenders, some city governments are ponying up money to increase their salaries — on top of the rates paid by the state. Virginia Beach and Norfolk, for example, are among 11 localities statewide that have approved local funding for such salary supplements.

But when the Hampton and Suffolk public defender’s offices made similar requests this year, the councils declined to include money in their budgets — on the basis that public defender’s attorneys are state employees rather than city ones.

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Widening pay disparities

For decades, city councils and county boards around the state have pumped local money into prosecutors’ offices on top of the state pay rates. That’s allowed commonwealth’s attorneys to not only pay higher salaries, but also hire more prosecutors and paralegals.

But the localities haven’t done the same for public defenders, leading to widening pay gaps between the two sides of the courtroom.

Hampton Public Defender Matt Johnson said that because he can’t pay well enough, he sees 25% of his staff turn over each year.

“It’s something that we swallowed for a while, but now it’s becoming a sustainability issue,” he said. “Our attorneys are faced with a decision of, ‘I would like to buy a house, but then how can I pay my student loans?’ Or, ‘Do I have to leave the job that I love to make ends meet?’”

The starting pay for the state’s public defenders is $55,700 a year, but most local prosecutor’s offices pay new attorneys at least $70,000. The disparities widen as attorneys move up the ranks, with prosecutors in many cases making $20,000 to $50,000 more than similarly experienced public defenders.

But the move to provide local funding to supplement the salaries is not universal in Hampton Roads.

While the Hampton and Suffolk city councils rejected their public defenders’ requests for supplements, public defenders in Newport News, Chesapeake and Isle of Wight didn’t ask for one.

The Portsmouth public defender is still negotiating with city officials over additional money.

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Right to counsel

Under the Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, anyone accused of a crime is entitled to “have the assistance of counsel for his defense” — even if he or she can’t afford a lawyer. In practice in Virginia, anyone deemed indigent under a state formula and charged with a crime punishable by jail time qualifies for a lawyer at taxpayers’ expense.

The commonwealth has a mixture of public defenders — who represent poor clients full time, mostly in larger jurisdictions — and “court-appointed” attorneys. Those are private practice lawyers appointed by judges to represent those who can’t afford an attorney, with the lawyers then billing the state for their hours.

The push for pay parity between prosecutors and public defenders comes on the premise that robust and experienced counsel for all sides in the courtroom reduces wrongful convictions and spurs fairer outcomes throughout the system.

“Criminal justice systems work where people enter the courtroom side by side with equal access and equal opportunity to have their case heard,” Johnson told the Hampton City Council recently. “We can’t have equal justice when one side is subsidized ... by the city and one side is not.”

House and Senate bills in this year’s General Assembly session would have required any locality that provides pay supplements to its prosecutor’s offices to do the same in equal proportion for its public defenders. But those bills never made it out of legislative committees, with localities strongly opposing the measure.

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Some cities provide supplemental pay

But many localities are stepping in.

More than a third of public defender’s offices statewide — 11 of 29 — are now getting or about to get pay supplements, to include offices in Richmond, Charlottesville and across Northern Virginia.

Virginia Beach has led the way in paying public defenders in Hampton Roads, with its City Council handing the Public Defender’s Office $500,000 checks two years in a row, to include the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Virginia Beach Public Defender Cal Bain said he pushed for the supplement after growing frustrated with constantly training new attorneys about “the nuts and bolts of being in court” only to lose them time and time again to the prosecutor’s office.

“They’d get snatched up after we’ve done all the hard work,” he said. “When they’ve finally gotten to the point where you feel like you can give the attorney a file and say, ‘Here’s your file. Go be a lawyer,’ that’s when they get snatched.”

Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney Colin Stolle strongly backed Bain’s request, calling it “a very serious need” and telling council members that less turnover at the public defender’s office would be good for everyone.

Bain said he’s used the new cash infusion to give $16,000 annual pay boosts to most of his attorneys, and $21,000 to some higher-ranking ones. That still won’t put the office’s pay even with prosecutors or private sector lawyers, he said, “but it’s already making a difference” in retaining people.

Norfolk followed suit in recent months, with the City Council signing off on a $285,000 supplement for its public defender’s office in the budget that begins July 1.

Norfolk Public Defender Sherri Carr was elated, saying she’s “so overjoyed to get this that I can’t stand it.” She plans to cut $10,000 paychecks to each of her 22 lawyers and $5,000 apiece to 13 other staffers.

“The amazing thing for me is the recognition and acknowledgment of the vital role that public defenders play in the system and the service that we provide the citizens of Norfolk,” she said. “We couldn’t be more grateful.”

Public defenders in Newport News, Chesapeake and Isle of Wight did not ask for or receive pay supplements. Meanwhile, Portsmouth Public Defender Althea Mease is still holding out hope for one, even though the city budget recently passed without funding included.

“It’s an ongoing conversation is the best I can say at this point,” Mease said.

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No additional money in Hampton, Suffolk

In Hampton and Suffolk, city councils rejected recent requests from public defenders for supplemental funding.

Johnson, who leads a staff of 23 employees at the Hampton Public Defender’s Office, asked the City Council for $335,000 on top of his $2.3 million state-funded budget. He made a detailed pitch to the city manager, then showed up at a May 4 council meeting with four attorneys in tow — all making their three-minute cases for the money.

“We are not able to adequately meet the needs of our clients, our citizens, because of pay inequality, of opportunities elsewhere,” Johnson told the council. “We have a constant flow of people in and out of the office. We’re unable to train people, retain people and recruit people.”

But Hampton City Manager Mary Bunting did not recommend any money for the public defender’s office in her budget request for the coming fiscal year, explaining to the council that since the agency’s staff are state employees, the state should pick up the tab.

“We all believe that our justice system should be fair and equitable,” she told the council. “I don’t think there’s a person up here that doesn’t believe there should be pay equity.”

But Bunting told the council that the city’s longstanding policy is not to supplement pay for state workers, citing past requests from court clerks and others.

“As empathetic as we were to the cause, we said no because it’s very difficult for a local government to pick up those additional responsibilities for any office that the state should be funding,” she said.

Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck said pay boosts to public defenders would set a “bad precedent” for the council.

“We’re saying the state should do what the state’s responsible for — which is providing for the proper funding for that agency,” he said in an interview.

While the Hampton City Council gave no money to its public defenders, it gave the Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office $2.9 million — a 62% increase over three years ago — to bring its combined state and city-funded budget to $4.4 million. Six recently created positions — three new prosecutors, a paralegal, a secretary, and a private investigator — bring the staffing level to 39.

“Crime has gone up nationwide, and Hampton is not exempt from the national statistics,” Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell said about his increased budget. “We need additional resources to prosecute these matters.”

Prosecutors also have to face off in court against private-sector defense attorneys, many of them highly paid.

Prosecutor’s offices — even as they are state constitutional offices led by elected officials — have largely been incorporated into local cities’ payroll and personnel systems, and are seen as city employees. But public defenders say they must remain state employees to avoid conflicts of interest in representing clients subject to various local rules.

Public defenders in Norfolk and Virginia Beach credited support from their commonwealth’s attorneys for success in getting pay boosts. But Bell, for his part, didn’t take a position on whether the Hampton public defender’s office should get such a supplement.

“That doesn’t involve me,” he said.

In Suffolk, Public Defender Jim Grandfield was likewise turned down for a $200,000 request to boost pay for his office, with Mayor Mike Duman telling him at a council meeting that giving city money to a state agency would be a problem.

“He said, ‘Mr. Public Defender, I don’t want you to feel slighted or anything, and we think it’s a worthy cause, but we just have some logistical problems with transferring city money to the state,’” Grandfield said.

Suffolk pays its prosecutors well, with several non-supervising prosecutors making over $100,000 a year, so Grandfield said it’s always been a struggle to keep people. But more recently, he said, one of his attorneys left for a job at the Virginia Beach Public Defender’s Office, citing the $16,000 pay bump and the fact that he lives in that city.

“I told him he’d be a fool not to go,” Grandfield said. “But I’m disappointed when you’re just hitting your stride and then you’re going.”

Though Grandfield failed to get the subsidy this year, he said, he’s learned a lot about how to go about it, and believes he has some “sympathetic ears” on the council to get one next year.

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Seeking state money

Near the end of the May 4 Hampton City Council meeting, Bunting suggested the council lead a “regional push” next year to get the state legislature to properly invest in “these fine employees” by giving raises.

She suggested that could be done through the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, a regional group Bunting helps to lead.

Robin McCormick, Hampton’s communications director, said “the root of the problem” is that “the state doesn’t pay its lawyers enough” — either prosecutors or public defenders. While the city boosts prosecutor pay because that office follows city policies, she said, Hampton taxpayers can’t be expected to do that for state workers.

“We did not create the public defender’s office,” McCormick said, saying the city was “perfectly happy” if the indigent were represented by court appointed counsel alone. “If the state wants good people that they employ, they need to pay for it.”

But Johnson said the local legislative delegation already backs supplements for public defenders, and contends it’s the cities that have created the vast pay disparity.

“When you say ‘Well, we’re just going to make a plea to the state and the state will fix it,’ they can’t fix it,” Johnson said. “The cities themselves are the ones that decided that there’s going to be this inequality.”

Maria Jankowski, the deputy executive director of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission — the state agency that oversees the state’s 29 public defender’s offices — said cities and counties led the push to kill the pay parity legislation.

Even if the state raises public defender pay, she said, the pay imbalance will remain if localities boost prosecutors’ salaries and not the public defender’s office.

“These localities need to understand that if they continue to unevenly support these two organizations, we’re always going to have a disparity,” Jankowski said. “And we’re always going to have a problem with turnover in the public defender’s offices.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com