Last March, officials with The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, New York County Defender Services and the Bronx Defenders told the City Council they need an additional $100 million to $150 million in the coming year to recruit and retain their public defense attorneys. <\/p>\n
The public defender groups said the new funding would go directly toward attorney salaries, which begin around $80,000 to $90,000 at most organizations in the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
Salaries for public defense attorneys in places like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, Oakland and San Francisco begin at upward of $100,000. The same is true for public defenders in at least seven counties in upstate New York, according to Stan Germ\u00e1n, the executive director of New York County Defender Services. <\/p>\n
The request for more funding also comes as over 2,000 attorneys and legal aid staffers will be negotiating new salaries later this year. <\/p>\n
Attorneys at five public defender groups will see their contracts expire at the end of June, and over 1,000 attorneys at the Legal Aid Society will begin negotiating their salaries around the same time, though their contract does not expire this year. <\/p>\n
But while public defenders struggle to claw as much of a salary increase as they can, legal aid advocates say police and district attorneys see regular pay growth each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYear after year, this city and this Council has found money to keep police officers and district attorneys in their jobs and guarantee them a pension,\u201d Jane Fox, the chair of the chapter of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys at the Legal Aid Society, said in a City Council meeting last March. \u201cWhile at the same time, our union members have been pushed out, told they are not worthy of an affordable wage or dignified retirement because of the people we represent every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the city\u2019s 2026 budget, over $633 million was allocated to the city\u2019s five district attorneys and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, a 23 percent increase compared to the previous year.<\/p>\n
The NYPD\u2019s budget has also steadily grown over the past decade and currently sits at $6.4 billion, though Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to keep police funding relatively flat in his preliminary budget.<\/p>\n
While caseloads for the city and state have shown downward trends in various categories in recent years, legal aid advocates argue more is needed to ensure low-income New Yorkers get their fair day in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call on our government funders, both in Albany and at City Hall, to address longstanding pay disparities, invest in hiring and retaining public defense staff, and ensure that caseloads are consistent with national standards for effective representation,\u201d the groups said. \u201cA fair and functioning legal system depends on strong public defense, which is rooted in the U.S. Constitution. Our staff, the low-income New Yorkers we represent, and the integrity of our courts depend on it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last March, officials with The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, New York County Defender Services and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-208972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}