Lawyer for Rifqa Bary's Mother Reacts to Governor Crist's Statement

The Governor's unfortunate decision to make a public statement taking sides in the Rifqa Bary case before any evidence other than allegations has been presented underscores the need to return this case to the child's home state of Ohio. Governor Crist stated that he was “grateful” that the judge ruled a specific way and in support of his “administration's position”. The entire Bary family has already been exploited by those who recklessly wish to force this case into a clash of religions, and now by the Governor's statement the Bary family's case has become a political matter as well.

Given that the Regional Counsel responsible for defending Mr. Bary is a political appointee of Governor Crist, a public statement of the Governor's pleasure with a specific ruling in the case is not appropriate. Now the Barys can only conclude that chances for impartiality and straight-forward dealings with DCF are slipping away.

Hey! One of the Regional Counsel Offices has a website!

I've been stunned and amazed for a couple of years that none of the Regional Counsel offices bother to maintain a website, as you might recall from this old post.

So in fairness I ought to point out that one of them actually has a website now.

Now the clients for the 4th Regional Counsel can find out how to contact their attorneys via the internet.

Excuse me?

Now this is a headline: "Former DCF Employee Sentenced For Embezzling $1.5 Million"

It was an emotional scene Thursday evening in a Broward County courtroom after a judge sentenced a longtime state employee who, along with two others, embezzled more than $1 million from the Department of Children & Families.

It was money that was earmarked for needy children.

Violet Jones, the ringleader in the embezzlement scheme, was the last to take the stand.
..."I should have known better," said the former DCF supervisor.
...Jones was sentenced to 17 years in state prison and 13 years probation for stealing $1.5 million dollars from DCF accounts and spending the cash. The Shorter sisters were sentenced to 10 years in prison, 20 years probation.

Words found in other news accounts...."widely respected" and "supervisor".

Wow. Well that sort of eats up a good chunk of the money Florida saved by pretty much destroying the private dependency defense bar, doesn't it?

Congratulations to the President-Elect

As I noted in the post below, I try to keep this blog non-partisan. I want to mark the election, however, and pass on to you something that I believe to be very well said at the NCCPR blog:

No matter who we voted for Tuesday, we all should be grateful for two things: First, let us be grateful that, when Barack Obama's mother decided she couldn't raise him for a while, no Child Protective Services agency ever got involved. And second, we should be glad that Marcia Lowry, founder and leader of the group that arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights" (CR) was not suing the State of Hawaii from 1971 through 1979.

This was the time when Barack Obama was being raised by his grandmother who, so sadly, died Monday. Obama has said a great deal about how important Madelyn Payne Dunham was to him. On Tuesday, Obama made history – and odds are that wouldn't have happened had he not spent eight years living with Dunham in what now we would call informal kinship care.

But in those cases where, unlike Obama's, child protective services is involved, CR is trying to curb informal kinship care drastically. The group has decided that the magic bullet for foster care is licensing. So the group's latest crusade is trying to strong-arm states into requiring that every grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle or other relative who steps forward to care for a loved one whose parents are accused of maltreatment jumps through all the same hoops and meets all the same hypertechnical licensing requirements imposed on total strangers. With only limited exceptions, the CR rule would be: No license, no grandchild.

Random state control update

I try, I really try, to keep politics out of this blog. I mean that. The majority of my colleagues who defend parents in dependency cases are what we would call politically liberal. The majority of my colleagues who work for the state, both attorneys and case workers and their web of supervisors (and by the way, DCF attorneys in Florida are now required to announce themselves as "attorney for the State" in all proceedings) are what we would call politically liberal.

Cool.

So please excuse me if I mention this:

"Our practice is when someone is thrust quickly into the public spotlight, we often take a look" at them, Jones-Kelley said"

It speaks for itself. Or at least, it ought to. Do I have this right? If a government official in charge of whether or not you get to keep your kids happens to hear your name somewhere, she by normal practice "takes a look" at you?

Scary.

Hey, how about this? Imagine you are a parent of a teen. Your teen is at school, and there is a sudden evacuation because there may be something lethal, something dangerous to life and limb, something frightening going on. Or maybe not. Your teen, standing outside the school and classroom and not especially being asked to participate in anything you might call learning, calls you on a cell phone to tell you that just in case you are worrying, she is o.k.

She gets suspended for violating the zero tolerance policy on involving parents in events that are 100% under the control of government, thank you very much.

I want to make a speech here, but I won't. Both of those links speak for themselves, and you and I (we dependency experts on both sides of the courtroom) know full well that "government", when it comes to deciding what is best for you and your children, is not some hyper-competent monolithic apparatus, but is usually instead a collection of scared young workers who will do anything but admit being wrong now and then.

More money to go to the removal side of the equation

This looks good on the surface, but underneath is a bad idea.

4th Regional Counsel seems heading for a crash

First, and let me get this out of the way: this is not gloating. I've never particularly wanted to see the OCCCRCs fail; I just don't see anything to disabuse me of the notion that failure is inevitable.

I've seen plenty of news articles over the past year stating that the offices are "up and running". I've not, until today, seen a news source take a closer look at how the offices are doing. This is from today's Daily Business Review. Some excerpts:

In a foundering economy with tight employment prospects, a new West Palm Beach-based state agency created as a backup public defender’s office is having problems retaining lawyers, suffering massive turnover in its first year.

At least 26 attorneys and staffers have left the office — including many who were forced out. That is almost a third of the 79 employees hired since September 2007, according to records obtained by the Daily Business Review.[snip]...A number of the people have been fired, and others left when faced with dismissal, according to sources familiar with the office who spoke on condition of anonymity. Others who quit of their own accord cited bad management, heavy workloads, poor working conditions and inadequate pay. Some said they left because they were forced to take cases above their experience level.[snip]...Complaints from former staffers have prompted several officials to take a closer look at the office.

Chief Palm Beach Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll said she plans to review the office’s representation. Citing the chief judge’s responsibility to monitor capital cases, she said she recently pulled the files of the two Palm Beach Circuit death penalty cases assigned to Massa’s office to see how they are progressing.

“There’s been some concerns raised, and we’re not sure if it’s just disgruntled employees or legitimate concerns about the office,” Kroll said. She wants to meet with Massa.

The Broward and Palm Beach public defenders plan to meet with each other to discuss the conflict counsel office....

OK, you get the point. You should read the entire story. Here's a couple more interesting things. Remember, the 4th RC's budget began in 2007 was reported as "around $5 million":

Critics claim the conflict counsel offices were woefully underfunded from the start. The 2008 state budget provided for a total of $7.1 million for the 4th DCA office and its allotted 63 positions. According to records obtained by the Review, more than 15 percent of these positions are open. The Legislature gave Massa a raise in July from $80,000 to $100,000. One of his chiefs, Jennifer Hixson, got a $17,000 raise to take her salary to $77,000. Some of the other employees also saw increases in salary.

I've been predicting all along that within a couple of years, the budget for the OCCCRCs will exceed the amount formerly paid to private (rotation) attorneys. And that leads me to what really caught my eye in the article:

“It gave me pause as to whether poor people were receiving the quality of representation and treatment that they’re entitled to,” Finkelstein said in an interview. “I don’t know whether or not the rumors are true, but it has certainly raised at least a warning that gives rise to questions that need to be posed.”

He said he plans to speak to Palm Beach Public Defender Carey Haughwout about concerns and potential problems about the office.

Haughwout said high turnover makes for “very unstable representation.” When told what the Review found, she said that’s much higher turnover than in her office.[snip]...Attorney Omar Ghaffar, who worked in the Fort Lauderdale office from May to September, said he was hired as a civil attorney, and his managers assigned him to criminal cases.

“I told them straight out that I’m not feeling comfortable doing these murder cases,” the former Broward assistant public defender said. He said he was assigned to cases he was barred from taking as a private attorney under the registry system that was in effect before the conflict counsel’s creation.

And there's the real issue. Even we forgotten few in dependency defense have to exhibit a certain level of proficiency before our local ISC will put us on the list. The ABA has model qualifications for private dependency defense lawyers (and criminal defense lawyers as well, of course). It appears from reports similar to those in the quoted article that, other than a bar card, there are no standards for experience before one is sent out on the job as an assistant regional counsel.