Who is the boss of the Regional Counsels?

The Attorney General response to the FACDL's quo warranto writ, as reported in the post below, seems to establish the official response of the government of the State of Florida to the question posed in my subject line.

I ask this because I have, of course, read the legislation establishing the Regional Counsel offices. I've read it several times. I've a license to practice law, and do try to keep my reading comprehension level up to snuff, but can't figure out exactly what sort of entity the Regional Counsel offices are.

We do know, by virtue of reading the Florida Constitution, that the RC offices are not a department of the executive branch, as is, for example, the Florida Department of Education.

We also know, by virtue of reading the legislation establishing the RC offices, that they are not an Agency under the executive branch, as is, for example, Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA).

I also know that, with the notable exception of Jack Flyte, the 2nd district Regional Counsel, that none of the RCs have responded in any way to any offers from the author of this blog to help them, or to requests from the author of this blog for either general information or the answers to specific questions.

Naturally, as we in Florida operate a government in the sunshine, I can submit a public records request and compel the Regional Counsels to answer questions. The problem is that I don't know to whom I might submit those requests.

If I've missed something, I am happy to humble myself and acknowledge that, so if any of you know what it is I'm missing, post a comment. To whom do I submit a public records request to get answers from the RCs?

Who supervises the five regional counsels? Is it JAC (Justice Administrative Commission)? Is it the Florida Supreme Court? Is it, as the Attorney General's filing linked in the post below seems to suggest, the various public defender offices? [ed: if you read the AG's response to the quo warranto action, you have to conclude that it is the PDs offices....but which one?]

Who is the direct supervisor of the following?
1st District: Jeffrey Lewis
2nd District: Jackson Flyte
3rd District: Joseph George
4th District: Philip Massa
5th District: Jeffrey Deen

Despite a keen interest and asking around quite a bit and having people come to me for the answer to the question, I simply don't know.

Do you?

The Attorney General's response to FACDL's quo warranto writ

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope your long weekend was as wonderful as mine. While I took several days off from blogging, I got a copy of the AG's response to the FACDL action, not because of my direct request to the AG's office for a copy, but because of a friendly tipster.

What is it with public servant's not willing to click "reply" on an email from a citizen like myself? For more thoughts along those lines, see the post above.

Anyway, here it is. Click here for a pdf of the AG's response.

Here are some excerpts, presented as the titles to the various points of arguement:

A. The OCCCRCs Are Not Public Defenders Under Article V, Section 18 Of The Florida Constitution, But Act In Place Of The Public Defenders.

A. Petitioner’s Policy Concerns Are Without Merit.

In the second section of its argument, petitioner maintains that because the regional counsel are not elected they do not enjoy the same independence as do public defenders or court-appointed private counsel, and therefore the Sixth Amendment guarantee to effective assistance of counsel in criminal cases is somehow impaired.

[editor: While I agree with the FACDL that the new system pretty much has ineffective assistance of counsel built in to it, I can also understand the arguement of the AG in this section]

A. The Governor, the President of the Senate, and the Secretary of State Are Not Proper Parties To This Quo Warranto Action.

[Editor again: So there you go. That's pretty much it. The AG's arguement comes down to, if I read this correctly, that the Regional Counsels are, in fact, simply subordinates of the various public defenders, nothing more nor less. This, of course, completely ignores dependency cases, which have never been part of the public defenders' responsibilities. Perhaps the AG doesn't see a need to approach that issue since it wasn't raised in the FACDL quo warranto action.]

The AG files answer to FACDL's quo warranto writ

Thanks to an alert commenter, I note that the 2d circuit's public website now shows that an answer to the judge's show cause order was filed on November 14 as an answer to the FACDL's quo warranto writ.

I'm sorry that I don't now have the text of the answer. I'll look around for it. Appearing for the State is attorney Louis Hubener. I've emailed him to see if he is willing to pass on the text of his reply.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead

(If the subject line has you baffled, you can click here)

Well, as you can tell by the lack of posts, it has been a slow news week with regard to the progress of the Regional Counsel offices getting set up.

That may change quite soon. Tomorrow is the deadline for the Legislature and the Regional Counsels to show cause why the FACDL's quo warranto writ ought not be granted, as I reported a couple of weeks ago.

As of this moment, the Leon County Clerk's (public via internet) records do not show any response filed. That, of course could be due to lack of a timely update, or simply because the Respondents are waiting until tomorrow (the deadline) to file.

I'll keep you updated.

Veterans' Day

One year ago, on November 11th, literally on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, I attended the funeral and burial of a dear friend who gave his life for our country in Iraq. We'd graduated West Point together and served in uniform together. I never saw combat. He, and many of my closest friends, did.

Tomorrow is Veterans' Day. I hope it is a blessed day for all of the DependencyDefense.com readers.

There is plenty of news about the Regional Counsels and what's coming and about some remarkable and newsworthy things that are developing in even my own defense cases, but those posts can wait.

This weekend I'm going to remember Paul, his widow and his little girls.

Genius is common if you allow yourself to see it

All I can say is hit this link and read the whole thing.

The reason you want to is hinted at in this quote:

"I've been througheverything. At first I hated it and I would cry and I would be like, 'Oh why me God, why did everyone get to have their parents and normal lives and do normal things,'" he said.

"After a while it just hit me that he is putting me in this position to help other people," he added.

His determination to be heard is what brought him to the attention of George Sheldon, assistant secretary for Florida's Department of Children & Families, which oversees the foster care system.

They met at a conference for foster children and their advocates in Tampa, during a discussion about how to find runaway foster children.

Coffman felt the focus was misplaced.

"After about 20 minutes, Devan raised his hand and suggested that it might be a good idea if we started looking at all the reasons the kids were running away in the first place," Sheldon said.

Really, read the whole thing.

Office Space...more of the same

Once again from the Miami Herald:

The Broward branch of a new state agency whose mission is to represent poor clients is supposed to start taking cases in two months, but so far, it has no place to put even a desk.

Philip Massa, who will oversee the Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel in Broward, had hoped that the county would donate office space in or near the Fort Lauderdale courthouse, but frustrated commissioners made it clear on Tuesday they were having none of it.

Commissioners pointed out that Broward doesn't have enough room in its aging courthouse for current workers. Broward is searching for a location for a new, larger courthouse but doesn't have the money to pay for it.

''The inn is full and falling down,'' Commissioner Lois Wexler said. ``There really is no space in our county buildings.''

Commissioners said the state shouldn't ask for free space after imposing budget cuts that cost Broward $90 million this year. If voters approve a constitutional amendment on Jan. 29, commissioners would have to cut at least $76 million next year.

Massa declined to comment after the unanimous vote. However, he expressed his anger at commissioners -- suggesting that facing them was like speaking before the Supreme Court.

...and so on. This particular story is getting a bit stale. But how about this:

Massa will likely have to look for space to rent -- but there aren't many options near the courthouse. He plans to start taking cases around Jan. 1. But the fact that the agency has no office and has filled only three of 28 to 32 positions doesn't bode well.

I've noticed in trend in recent news stories. The new law took effect July 1, 2007. Since the Regional Counsels weren't appointed yet, it was understood that they would take over October 1, 2007. That has come and gone, leaving the drop-deadline of January 1, 2008, since the legislation gave wiggle-room until then. Now more and more news stories hint at "sometime next year", or in this case, "around January 1".

Such things are no longer news. What is interesting, however, are comments posted in response to this article. For instance:

Commenter: They replaced the old system that cost $95 mil last year with a systemn that costs $57 mil - without overhead. That's why they're asking the Counties for free office space. How many people would find it easier to make ends meet if they didn't have to pay rent?

Commenter: When you add up the cost of the Regional Counsel, to the cost of the cases the RC DOESN'T cover - plus overruns for overhead, you will come up with more than $95 milllion. Then add the cost f all the changes that were made

Six attorneys statewide?

Two news articles today focus on the difficulties of the Regional Counsel offices getting set up, specifically the lack of significant progress (for at least a couple regions) in getting office space and...what are those things called?....lawyers.

First, from the Miami Herald:

Less than two months before it's expected to start accepting cases, a new state legal agency for the poor has no office space in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

On Tuesday, Broward County commissioners will decide whether to provide free space to the fledgling office. The likely answer: No way.

The Miami-Dade branch is a little further along, but it still has about two dozen positions to fill and it also has not moved into a permanent space....

For now, employees of the new state agency for Miami-Dade are working out of the private office of Joe George, an attorney hired to oversee Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

George said he has hired 15 employees and will hire up to 30 more. His office has taken two cases so far.

In Broward, only three of 28 positions have been filled. But Philip Massa, who is overseeing the new office in Broward, said it will be ready to start taking cases later this year or early next year....

''Someone who says the quality of service is going down is absolutely wrong,'' Crist said. ``The 10 percent that will require sophisticated legal talent will get it. The talent may not necessarily be on staff.''

I bolded that last bit because it strikes me, with all respect to Senator Crist, as quite an insult to the private attorneys who handled cases in the past. It comes across to me as saying that 90% of cases involving the defense of the indigent really ought to be handled by only slightly-trained monkeys. And what about dependency cases specifically? Do they, by definition, need only unsophisticated legal non-talent, as a matter of state legislative policy?

This blog, and its parent site DependencyDefense.com, only exist because of the notion that not having full-time experienced and capable defense attorneys in dependency case not only leads to more injustice, but also increased misery among children who could have been kept at home, and vastly (really, this can barely be understated) increased costs in all other areas of what I think of as the Child Abuse Industry (more on that in a later post).

In another article from the Daily Business Review, we read (excerpted):

The state’s new Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel in Miami lost his first appeal last week — but it wasn’t in court. Miami-Dade County denied his request for office space...
According to Philip Massa, the fourth region’s Conflict Counsel director, Broward County hasn’t committed office space either, although Palm Beach County did make a commitment...
[Jeffrey] Lewis said Escambia County already has provided him with a 3,500-square-foot office, but noted that finding office space in the remaining parts of his massive region — in cities such as Jacksonville — will likely be a challenge...

[D]irectors of the five regional offices have made little headway in attracting lawyers willing to take them up on a base salary that by statute is less than the $80,000 each director makes. Statewide, there are only about a half dozen attorneys who have agreed to work for the new office, which is supposed to have a support staff of 384 lawyers and clerical employees.

Why does this article contradict the other one about how many attorneys have been hired so far? Probably because of something like this:

New directors George, Jackson Flyte and Jeffrey Deen did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

I want to touch on a little bit more from the first article. I didn't quote it in the portion above.

For several years, private attorneys have been hired to handle cases in which the county public defender has a conflict of interest.

But that led to problems: Attorneys had a financial incentive to quickly settle cases, and some judges would dole out cases to their favorite attorneys.

Even a rotating appointment system in Broward was questionable because some judges would skip over attorneys they didn't know or trust.

''The costs for providing these services were growing out of control,'' said state Sen. Victor Crist, a Tampa Republican who pushed to create the new office.

This reinforces one thing that is clear to most of us in the dependency defense community (such as it is): the switch to the Regional Counsel system is all about money. There is nothing wrong at all about our elected representatives being fiscally prudent. My problem is that no one, certainly not Senator Crist, can speak in an affirmative and positive manner about how, exactly, this system is going to even address, much less solve, the problem of delivering quality and effective legal services to poor parents who have had their children removed by the State. I've been listening for it, and I haven't heard it.

Finally, about that bolded portion there. That may have been the case down in Broward -- I don't have enough good information about that -- but it was certainly not the case in the rest of the State. Locally, we dependency defenders were subjected to serial ISC meetings in which we were told rather clearly that our old system had to be changed because it encouraged attorneys to spend too much time on their cases. Certain attorneys from DCF delighted in the changes that the local ISC made last year specifically because it we defense attorneys would now have a very big incentive to settle (in dependency cases settling most often means simply doing everything that DCF asks you to do without one piece of evidence ever being presented). They were gleeful about how sticking it to defense attorneys would have that precise, and from their point of view, desirable effect.

Now that the new system's flaws are showing to more people, that old position is being widely forgotten, even as Senator Crist cavalierly states that 90% of cases need no sophisticated legal talent. The article above cites the "settling too quickly" problem as the reason for destroying the system under which attorneys had been accused of spending too much effort on their cases, leading to the Regional Counsels, under which all signs point to an absolutely desperate need to settle as many cases as possible as quickly as possible because of lack of manpower.

Judge issues show cause order on FACDL's quo warranto writ!

Thanks again to a tipster.

You can view a pdf of Judge Davey's order here.

It says:

"Finding that Petitioner has made a prima facie showing for quo warranto relief, this Court...hereby issues this Writ of Quo Warranto and directs the Respondents to show cause, in writing, on or before November 16, 2007, as to why such relief should not be granted. Copies of such response shall be filed with this Court. Upon receipt of the Response, the Court will expedite all further proceedings."

Wow. This is an interesting development. I wonder, given the wording of the Order in the plural (Respondents) if each of the Regional Counsels will file a response as well as the Governor and President of the Florida Senate.

6th Circuit fleshes out some information for the transition

This is dated September 19, 2007 and I just ran across it today. It may not be representative of how things will work with the regional counsels in every circuit, but at least answers some questions for the 6th. And excerpt:

"Dependency Cases -- conflicts between parents will continue to arise and it is expected that dependency attorneys will continue to be needed in significant numbers."

I highly recommend you click on the link above and read the entire document.