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DeKalb County, Illinois |
Minutes of the
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The Public Services Committee of the
DeKalb County Board met on Monday, September 23, 2002, at 6:30 p.m. at the
Administration Building's Conference Room East. Chairman Sue Leifheit called the
meeting to order. Members present were Marlene Allen, Dr. Conway, Ms. Dubin, Mr.
Haines, Mr. Metzger and Robert Pritchard. Mr. Brown was absent. Others present were Gary Hanson,
Ken Johnson, Margi Gilmour, Robert Rosemeier, Debbie King, Sheriff Roger Scott,
Dennis Miller, Judge Kurt Klein, Julia Fauci and Carl Heinisch.
Moved
by Mr. Pritchard, seconded by Dr. Conway, and it was carried unanimously to
approve the minutes from the August 2002 meeting.
Moved by
Mr. Pritchard, seconded by Mr. Metzger, and it was carried unanimously to accept
the agenda.
PUBLIC
DEFENDER’S REPORT
Mr. Ken
Johnson, DeKalb County Public Defender, briefly reviewed his report for the
month of August 2002. He said that
the numbers had a slight increase in the month of August.
He said that since the State’s Attorney is seeking the death penalty in
one of his cases, there is a lot more work that will be involved.
He has reached out already to the State Appellate Defender’s Office and
asked for an attorney, investigator and a social worker to do the majority of
the work which would have cost his department about $40,000 just from the
experts standpoint. That’s coming
from the Capital Litigation Division, he continued.
There is also money available from the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, he
said, from Judy Barr Topinka’s Office, which he will tap into those resources
as well. He is using every
available funding from the State that he can find for this case.
COURT
SERVICES REPORT
Ms. Margi
Gilmour, Director of Court Services, said that her numbers on the Adult Court
Services Report remain very consistent. She
also said that the Community Service Program in July reflected that the number
of hours completed exceeded the number of hours ordered, which is pretty typical
in the summertime. The SWAP Program
is going very well. They just had a
juvenile/sheriff work alternative program a couple of Saturday’s ago.
They have one more juvenile and one more adult program to go before it
gets too cold for them to got outside and work.
It has been another successful year for this program.
The
Juvenile Report for the month of July reflects that they had 12 detention
admissions for the month of July. Of
those admissions, one child was detained twice, and out of those 12 detentions -
5 kids were for the 1st time, 2 for the 2nd time, 1 each
for the 3rd and for the 4th time, 2 for the 5th
time, and one child for the 9th time. They also have one female
that’s in residential placement that went in at the very end of July for some
mental health issues.
The
Intensive Probation Program is running very well.
They are up and running with 11 juveniles in the program.
They have coverage every day of the week.
The two officers have been covering the weekends and are working until
approximately 8:00p.m. on weeknights. So
far, so good, the kids have been pretty responsive to the daily and multiple
daily checks. The schools have received the program very well, too.
She believed that they may have another 3 or 4 kids that have detentions
pending to enter into the program.
The
Multi-Family Problem Solving Group is still moving along very well.
They will be moving that group into the Gathertorium beginning the first
Monday in October. They currently have seven families that are attending the
group sessions. They had a N.I.U. student intern come in and do evaluations of
the program. They surveyed the parents of the program and all of the responses
that they received were positive. As
soon as she has that report compiled she will share that with the committee.
The
Learning Mentor Program Open House last week – their first annual one.
It was well attended. Many
of their mentors were there, along with some county board members and a student
involved in the program. She felt
that it accomplished the goal of letting the mentors know that their work is
appreciated and recruited several other mentors to get involved in the program.
2003
BUDGET APPEALS:
Public
Defender’s Appeal:
Mr. Ken Johnson, DeKalb County Public
Defender, along with Judge Kurt Klein were present to discuss the Public
Defender’s budget appeal. Chairman
Leifheit said that there was a denial to upgrade an attorney to a full-time
staff attorney for the public defender’s department.
Mr. Johnson
referred the discussion to Judge Klein to respond to the issues that involve
juvenile cases. Judge Klein said
that the Public Defender is partially under the auspices of the Presiding Judge.
He is seeking to create a full-time position for the assistant public
defender who only does juvenile matters now and it is a part-time position
currently. Judge Klein understands
that we may not see the whole picture and the difficult decisions that the
county board had to make with regards to the budget.
However, juvenile representation is an important aspect of the criminal
justice system, he said. He has
looked at statistics that state, over the last three (3) years juvenile numbers
have been going up by roughly 50 a year. These
cases aren’t one or two appearances and then they are over - these cases go on
for years and it’s the nature of juvenile law.
Ms. Morreli who is the part-time assistant public defender now and
handles many of the juvenile cases, works more than 20 hours a week.
They are not asking on behalf of her because she has just learned that
she is pregnant and will probably be leaving the office to raise her child.
But, they will need to attract someone to that position who is competent
and does a good job. Given the caseload that that individual will carry,
part-time is not going to be attractive to a competent attorney.
He is asking that the committee consider making that position a full-time
position. He then thanked the
committee for listening to his request.
Mr. Johnson
said that the number of cases being handled currently by Ms. Morelli are both
juvenile and abuse and neglect, termination petitions.
Traditionally, our office was given a less active part in the juvenile
courtroom, but due to the increase in the number of conflict cases from his
felony level, his conflict attorneys are being phased into a less active role
because their felony caseload has increased so much.
The cases that they are currently representing on the juvenile petitions
are no longer just your truancy cases or cases of simple battery or retail
theft. They are seeing much more serious crimes, like drug offenses, property
crimes, crimes against persons. So
the workload that used to be at a misdemeanor level has not only increased in
the number of cases but also the work that is involved has increased too.
The way that it is handled in his office is that he handles the overload
of cases because his attorneys have their own felony caseload.
He averages about 8 hours a week in overtime if not more, like 10, 15 and
in some cases 20 hours in overtime. His
caseload alone, on a felony level, exceeds the standard which have been set
forth by many of the bar associations that he is supposed to handle.
He also does all the administrative work to make sure that his office is
running efficiently. He said that
some estimates from other counties as to what they are handling in caseload are
as follows. Cook County average
40-50 cases per attorney open at the same time, DuPage County is around 45-50
cases, Ms. Morreli ‘s part-time caseload shows that she has 50 open juvenile
cases and 160 of the neglect open files, which is almost 4 times the level of
what she should be at.
One of the
biggest concerns that they do have right now are the parental rights cases.
The increased number of parental rights terminations filed are the most
serious cases. That requires a lot
of research and they need to do a complete background search.
They need to look at whether or not the person had social problems
growing up, or did it develop in high school, was there a criminal record, etc.
It’s like working 10 different kinds of cases because there are so many
other things that they look at.
The
committee then asked questions of Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Haines asked Mr. Johnson, what effect if any does the court appointed
special advocates have on your numbers? Mr.
Johnson said that the numbers will come down with a juvenile when it comes to
certain cases. The goal of intense
probation is to make sure that the kids are monitored where they don’t get
involved in the court system. However,
this program will not take away the serious crimes that they are seeing.
Judge Klein
said that you have to remember that the statute requires that juveniles have an
attorney. The committee asked if
they can hire their own? Judge
Klein said that, yes they can.
Chairman
Leifheit asked, if Ms. Morelli said that she could only work 20 hours because
that is all that she is contracted for, can an outside attorney be hired?
Mr. Johnson said yes, he could do that but over the last three years that
I have been here I have tried to keep the budget numbers down.
Mr. Johnson
said that they do not feel that the current salary will not be attractive to a
competent attorney. That is, a
part-time position. Judge Klein
said that there would be younger attorneys that would be willing to work
part-time, but whether they would be willing to work at the current rate that we
are paying, to work the number of hours that Ms. Morelli has been working, he
didn’t think that they could.
Chairman
Leifheit asked that with the additional courtroom being added, how is that going
to affect the Public Defender’s Office? Judge
Klein said that the new courtroom is for the increased caseload in divorces and
traffic. Both of those court calls
are exploding because of the increase population that they are seeing.
The
committee asked Mr. Johnson and Judge Klein how the county board could fund the
request? Judge Klein said that in
Kane County the Chief Judge entered a local court rule where he is assessing
people $500.00 on a felony case for public defender representation, $250.00 for
Misdemeanors representation, and $125.00 for Traffic representation.
He said that Kendall and our county’s presiding judges can adopt the
Kane County local rule or not and Judge Klein has adopted it.
It will have some impact and will raise some money.
He further stated that starting December 1st he will start to
collect the new fees and he doesn’t know how much, but he will collect some.
Mr. Johnson
reviewed the funds that have been generated
in the Public Defender’s Fees. He
said that in 1999 it generated $2000.00, in 2000 it was $3,000.00, in 2001 right
after his tenure began they were right over $12,000.00 and in 2002 they will
probably be right over $12,000.00 again. He
also said that there is a savings of $24,000.00
in excess by not paying for the phone and electricity at the other building any
more. The phone bill will go down
now since they have moved into the courthouse.
They also are no longer paying rent or water.
Right now the professional service line item and the savings in rent is
what is paying for the part-time attorney, Mr. Johnson continued.
Mr. Johnson said that as of the last report in September, he has only
gone through 45% of his budgeted $58,000.00 in professional services line item.
He will have around $20,000.00 that he will be able to turn back to the
county this year.
After
further discussion the committee asked Judge Klein how much money did he feel
that new fee would generate? Judge
Klein said that he feels he could collect $24,000.00 at a minimum.
Moved by
Mr. Haines, seconded by Ms. Allen, and it was carried unanimously to recommend
the remaining monies from the Public Defender’s Professional Line Item of
$20,000.00 and the $10,000.00 from the new fee generated from the court to pay
for the $30,000.00 shortfall that is needed to pay for the full–time attorney
position requested by the public defender and to forward this recommendation
onto the Administrative Services Committee for their consideration.
CASA’s
Appeal:
There was
no one present to represent the CASA office with regards to their budget appeal.
They had requested $25,000.00 from the County to help pay for their program.
Ms. Allen asked if anyone knew if they approach the various cities
throughout the county for funds? No
one knew. Chairman Leifheit said that they did not approach the
Sycamore United Way for funds and that maybe they should ask that agency for
funds throughout the county, too.
The
Committee agreed that since there was no one present to be heard from CASA
regarding their budget appeal that they felt that the County should strongly
support the program and revisit it next year.
Moved
by Mr. Metzger, seconded by Ms. Allen, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn
the meeting.
Respectfully
submitted,
_______________________________
Sue Leifheit, Chairman
___________________________
Mary Supple, Secretary
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