Lewis County faces challenges with funding its mandated public defense efforts.
County officials say the problem is likely to get worse pending a new state rule that restricts caseloads for attorneys working as public defenders.
On Wednesday, Oct. 1, Lewis County Budget Administrator Becky Butler spoke with the Lewis County commissioners about the county’s public defense program during the last of three days of preliminary budget hearings. Butler also touched on a new standard announced by the state Supreme Court that could increase the cost of providing defense for those who cannot afford their own. It’s a right mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In June, the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously agreed to set new standards around caseload limits for public defense attorneys in the state. The move calls for public defense attorneys to handle a maximum of 47 felony cases or 120 misdemeanor cases each year. Those limits cut the current limits to roughly one third of what they are now.
Public defenders are currently limited to 140 felony cases each year and 400 misdemeanor cases.
The state Supreme Court published the order for the changes to the state standards on June 9. They are set to go into effect on the first of the year, Jan. 1, 2026, and according to the order compliance should be “accomplished as soon as possible.”
According to Butler, Lewis County currently has a caseload maximum of around 150 felony cases per year or 300 misdemeanor cases per year.
In 2024, Lewis County assigned 1,871 misdemeanor cases and 853 felony cases to its seven contracted public defenders with individual caseloads ranging from as few as 99 misdemeanor cases or 107 felony cases to as high as 337 misdemeanor case units.
The order does provide some relief to local governments that might struggle to implement the new standard, allowing them to implement the standards over 10 years by making steady incremental progress to reducing the caseload standards in the local jurisdictions.
Specifically, the order allows the governments to reduce their caseload maximums by 10% of the gap between their current standards and those mandated by the state Supreme Court.
During the presentation from Butler, she made clear that even with the slower implementation, the county faces two significant challenges to complying with the new standards; firstly finding more public defenders and, secondly, paying them.
“It could be a challenge over the next few years,” Butler said. “We are very lucky to have the experienced attorneys that we have with the amount of years that they have in providing public defense, but the future is going to be challenging regardless because money doesn’t necessarily fix the problem that there’s not enough attorneys coming out of law school to support this mandate.”
The county is currently entering into negotiations with its current public defenders to find a way to begin implementing the standards.
In 2026, public defenders in Lewis County will handle no more than 140 felony cases or 282 misdemeanor cases and the following year would not handle more than 129 felony cases or 264 misdemeanor cases. Assuming the standards do not change, the county would continue to decrease the amount each year until meeting the standards mandated by the state in 2035.
The new standards have drawn stiff opposition from many local governments represented by groups such as the Washington State Association of Counties (WSAC) and the Association of Washington Cities (AWC). The latter published a letter to the state Supreme Court last month highlighting the challenges faced by local governments when providing public defense services.
In the letter, the AWC brings up both budgetary challenges and an ongoing shortage of public defenders in the field. It highlights specifically that local governments fund a much larger portion of public defense than they are compensated for by the state. According to the letter from the AWC, cities and counties handle roughly two thirds of the state's misdemeanor cases and more than half of the state's felony cases while receiving 10% of the state's public defense budget.
“This burden historically required cities to spend more than an estimated $40 million annually to provide public defense,” the AWC stated in the letter. “Complying with the increased demands of the court’s order will strain budgets further. A long-recognized shortage of available qualified attorneys exacerbates the challenge.”
Cities and counties say the standard could force them to choose between spending more of their local budgets on public defense or prosecuting fewer crimes.
The change will also have an impact on the public defenders themselves. Groups representing public defenders statewide, such as the Washington State Bar, have argued the rule is necessary to protect the attorneys from overwhelming workloads and to attract new attorneys. But local public defenders worry the impacts of the standards could make it more difficult to work as a public defender in rural areas.
One of Lewis County’s newer public defenders, Rachel Hunt, said that full compliance by the county would be devastating for her practice largely because Lewis County, like many rural counties, contracts its defenders instead of hiring them on as salaried employees as many larger counties do.
“I get paid less a unit based on the county that I work in. That's kind of the give and take that I’m doing my dream job, so I’m OK with it,” Hunt said. “But if this were to be implemented like tomorrow, I just wouldn't be able to have the same practice in Lewis County that I have now. What that would look like is kind of difficult to answer because all of the surrounding counties are facing the same problem with how the order is currently written if you’re case limited in one area you’re case limited.”
Public defenders worry about the financial sustainability of being a public defender. Lewis County expects it will simply have to pay the same amount for less work.
“Every year that that 10% reduction happens, that means that the attorneys are going to charge more because they're not going to make less,” Lewis County Commissioner Sean Swope said. “This is going to have a drastic compounding effect.”
