Cook County Public Defenders Blog

Annette and Frankie will be there

In April, the board participated in AFSCME Leadership Academy and identified areas that needed to be addressed within the local. Pictured from left to right are Monique Patterson, Joe Gump, Amy Thompson and Kulmeet Galhotra. (Not pictured: Brendan Max)After a careful assessment, the local leadership established the goal of having one certified steward for every twenty members.  At the time, the local had stewards, but none were certified.  So local leaders put together a plan to achieve our goal.  In early July, the plan culminated with a two-day training at Council 31 offices downtown, that led to the local having a cadre of over 20 certified stewards. Pictured below are the certified stewards and Ade Alagbala, our former staff representative from Council 31.  And during the week of July 28, 2008, we attended the International Convention in San Francisco. (Pictured below are the Local 3315 delegates consisting of the elected executive board of the local).  During the convention, the delegation listened to speeches by Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.  Senator Barack Obama spoke to the delegates via satellite. Click video for a link to the speech.At the Council 31 reception for convention delagates, the local leadership were able to make their presence known to AFSCME International Leadership.  (Pictured below, Local President Galhotra with AFSCME International Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy.)And the local always strives to maintainin a good working relationship with Council 31. (Pictured below, Joe Gump and Kulmeet Galhotra pose with Council 31 Executive Director, Henry Bayer).Pictured below is Joe Gump running in the Fun Run (5:45 am) to raise money for the PEOPLE campaign.  The runners raised over $30,000.  Nice job Joe!

Well this article from the LA Times seems to be the talk of the criminal defense community.  Read the article here.

George Grzeca still has several foursomes available for the local’s golf outing scheduled for JULY 24, 2008.  Please call him at 26th Street (x5072) as soon as possible before all the spots are gone.

By now, all members should have received a one page union negotiation survey that allows you to prioritize issues and provide insight into any issues that the membership feel are important.  Please complete the survey soon and send them to ARLENE FLOREN at CIVIL through interoffice mail.  The deadline is July 8, 2008.   The board will utilize the tabulated results in forming our proposals.If you have not yet received the survey, please contact her (ARLENE) or the steward at your worksite.

Brother Kevin Ochalla has organized our union sponsored softball team again this year.  The first game is at 7:00 pm on Thursday, 6/12/08 at Welles Park (Montrose and Western). Our team is Time Considered Served  and is currently looking for interested players from our ranks.

For more information on playing or the schedule, call Kevin at Ext. 6161 at 26th Street. 

Read here about the caseload problems for Miami public defenders and their plan to stop accepting appointment on new cases: http://www.miamiherald.com/519/story/555857.html.

The Chicago Tribune reported on May 29, 2008, that private law firms are facing attorney layoffs as a result of slow business in today’s difficult economic times. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-thu_sonnenschein-law-firmmay29,0,7316409.story  However, there are some important differences between layoffs in the private sector and layoffs in the Public Defender Office: 1) in the private sector layoffs may mean less attorneys but there are correspondingly fewer clients to represent whereas layoffs in the Public Defender Office means less attorneys but no reduction in the number of clients who need our help, and 2) attorneys facing layoff in the private sector have no seniority or recall rights.

We are not the only Public Defender office in the country to have to fight for our jobs and adequate numbers of attorneys to represent the thousands of indigent clients in need.  Public Defenders in Minnesota are now facing the same budget issues we have faced the last several years: http://www.startribune.com/local/19160754.html.  We can only hope that someone there will stand up for the front-line attorneys and their clients.

As printed in the May 17, 2008 edition of the Daily Herald: 
Let public in on public defender hearing

Few people, even the most ardent advocates of open government, would argue that personnel evaluations ought generally to be conducted in open public meetings. But there are times …Take the case of Cook County Public Defender Ed Burnette. Here we have a civil servant whose job is specifically designed to be independent of politics facing the possibility of being fired for purely political reasons.It won’t surprise you to learn who is trying to fire him in such circumstances. That would be Cook County Board President Todd Stroger. Nor, sadly, will the specifics of Burnette’s case surprise anyone remotely familiar with the brazen cynicism of Cook County government. Burnette’s job is on the line because he challenged Stroger at least twice. First by filing suit to assert his independence when the Cook County board president ordered him to trim the size of his staff, then by objecting when Stroger placed on Burnette’s payroll an employee who did no work for the public defender and was answerable only to the county board president.For such determination, Burnette was labeled insubordinate and Stroger set a hearing for his firing. The hearing is required because state law pointedly distinguishes the public defender position from every other administrative role in the county. The public defender’s office exists to ensure justice for some of society’s most vulnerable individuals — the indigent accused of crimes but lacking the means to defend themselves. Such a function, the law wisely realizes, must be protected against the whims of fickle politics, and the person leading it cannot be constantly answering to political rather than legal demands.Thus, the job is established as a fixed six-year appointment, and any attempt to remove the public defender requires a formal hearing. If a political powerbroker aiming to find a new department in which to stash patronage workers wants to remove an impediment, he at least has to show a legitimate job-based cause.Does Stroger have job-based justification here? Well, Burnette certainly has defied his authority. But the question, as Burnette’s suit seeks to clarify, is what authority the public defender has defied.The answer to that question ought to be left to the courts. Curiously, Stroger seems unable to wait that long. Burnette has only a year remaining on his appointment, so the county board president will be able to name whatever puppet he likes soon enough, as long as the person isn’t so clearly incompetent that even the board members in Stroger’s pocket can’t vote to confirm.Why then is Burnette’s dismissal so urgent? What offense has he committed that justifies challenging the critical independence built into the nature of his office? Burnette himself has asked these questions and wants the county board to let them be presented on the public stage. We do, too.This is not a case of violating an employee’s privacy. It’s a case either of the county board president’s simple assertion of power or of the public defender’s inability to accomplish the job he’s been doing for five years. The public should get a free and open opportunity to watch the proceeding and judge for itself.