One county lawmaker suggests the findings should be turned over to the district attorney’s office

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A new audit from the Erie County Comptroller is raising red flags over the way the county’s assigned council program is being run.

That program uses taxpayer dollars to pay for lawyers for defendants who don’t have the funds to hire their own attorney.

60% of the costs are paid by the state with 40% paid by the county and they amount to millions of dollars year.

County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick stopped short of suggesting there was malfeasance afoot, but strongly recommends the program needs to adhere to better accounting practices.

Acting on a tip from a whistleblower, who suggested there was possible abuse by attorneys billing more than they should, Hardwick’s office looked back over a three-year period ending in 2024, and focused on the top 16 attorneys in terms of the amount they billed.

One billed $465,000 in one year, while claiming to have spent more than 3,000 hours on cases in another year.

“We found that there were a number of them substantially over the number of hours that the state was recommending. The state recommends the state standard for assigned council at 1,875 hours and  some of these attorneys had over three thousand hours they were billing for and that obviously the taxpayers were paying,” Hardwick told WGRZ-TV.

In another instance, according to the audit, a lawyer billed $14,000 for a misdemeanor case that eventually ended with a plea, which would normally cost about $1,000.

The results of the audit, while shocking in one respect, were not a surprise to Erie County Legislator Lindsey Lorigo (R-District 10).

“We know that in the Assigned Council Program there have been problems before,” Lorigo said. “Just last year my caucus actually called on Michelle Parker, who is in charge, to resign because some of conflicts of interest and other issues.”

According to Lorigo, the results of the audit suggest incompetence at best and malfeasance at worst.

“We’re responsible for the taxpayer dollar that go toward this program so we’re calling on the District Attorney to launch an investigation to make sure taxpayer dollars are being managed responsibly. This is  irresponsible management and there’s nothing else to say about it,” she said. 

The audit names none of the lawyers whose billing was researched and cited.

Hardwick says the names of those attorneys are certainly available to the district attorney upon request.

“There may have been a need for more oversight certainly,” Hardwick said. “But now we’ve drawn attention to this problem and I know that the the administration at the assigned council program is taking this seriously and they are going to get back to us.  But, in the meantime, the data are there for anyone who wants to look at them.”

You can read the full audit and the Assigned Council response below: