we have to make a determination to make it on budget. it's not an easy position to be in when those are long-standing employees. the mayor's office is putting in new rules that if the employee leaves they can't fill the position until there is a rec by the mayors offices. >> thank you very much. i apologize for being late i'm in trial on a homicide case. what i want to express is this. we're not here simple to say

sorry we over spent our bublt. we're constitutionally mandated to fill our budget and this is required of us not only in the city department but in the city mandatory. we're - the reality is when we don't have an singularly staff and i'm coming to you right now because we have 3 investigator positions two, that are vacant now and 2 in a couple of weeks of those cases loads are 2 hundred or so. we're going to be forced to let the mayor's budget office to

know this and again, i refer those casess to the private bar not because we don't have the attorney support but the volunteer support. right now, i'm trying a murder case and in order to prepare a case for trial i can't bring the case >> excuse me. >> yes. i was going to make a statement similar to what you are talking about. i look at this supplemental coming before us and the contacts coming before us in the past we had a long, you know, dragged out relationship about how we fund the public defender and the court and the private

bar and the idea about what is caseload is for the public defender and you have work to maintain and you have effective recommendation in the office and a lot of cases have gone to the private bar. that actually costs money for the city to pay for the services as well to the chiropractor. i actually see that, you know, there's a that capacity that you have to refer more cases to the court and that would actually be an increased amount to the city and i know i have the ability to move the cases over and i'd rather have the cost saving by not doing that.

making sure this existing staff is to make sure you have the balance necessary i have the resources necessary to balance our needs around the caseload. i do recognize that you have additional mandate on you now with the court i don't like using the words e inadmissibility but to stretch our existing resources i'm supportive given the relationship we have between the budget and your office to support this supplemental. we'll very likely see other expenditures we don't want to see because we have other fish to fry as we extend our services

>> i'm sorry but i have a completely different prospective. i don't believe for a second that those positions are going to legitimately get the city to -- i was hoping that argument won't come up because we have a dysfunctional aspect to this service. if you don't do that, of course, the district attorney can't do that he will find ways to manage

his equally important robert so he can't declare unavailable so i don't - i understand that you have the power to declare unavailability and to start spending public money i don't agree with it and i think it's unfortunate and if we need to have some disagreements in the coming years.

every person who needs our representation gets the representation. keep in mind that our office only has a limit number of investigators in terms of our felony cases we have only 9 investigators that handle exclusi exclusively murder cases. and we have one on a temporary leave we're down 50 percent, 60

percent of our staff. who's going to investigate those cases. innocent people are convicted and we can't have a constitution with the right to counsel and at the same time not provided the public defender the right to hire staff. i'm not able to higher investigators to replace investigators because we start at the beginning of the year with a 6 figure deficit. we haven't expanded any programs and we're taking on more responsibility. and so what i'm asking the board

to do is work with our office. i've only come here twice asking for supplemental. so we could keep our staff to stay on. it cost your city $4.3 million. and this is not a threat. >> you make because of our resources agenda in our office. i don't agree the post defender has an incredible responsibility but to suggest that the da is going to say oh, we're not going

to prosecute those cases because we don't have enough staff? >> each of those 3 law offices is technique and that includes managing the arouses and the public defender makes decisions you're the boss but to come in and say we're going to swamp our budget because we inside to. >> i made it clear from the very beginning that i'm not going to provide substandard representation. i'm not going to say we're going

to do that without investigative support. we've got a caseload of every one of our attorneys we've done the same thing for investigators. if you can show me we have too much staff for our caseload then i'll awe agree but that's not going to happen. all we want to do is we're able to fill those investigator positions. each one of those murder cases is going to cost the city in the range of 1 hundred to $300

>> those positions i don't buy that will lied you to declare inavailability. none of the city or county offices in this state - it's not unique. you have seen significant staffing in the last few years. i just don't buy this is going to declare inavailability legitimately >> just to patch the whole here to how it could lead to inavailability. it's not the court specialist that would lead it that. it's when our salaries are not accountable for the year the

mayor's office is concerned and saying we're not going to let you higher anybody when you have the salary or budget deficit that's what the position - it

>> they say why don't you give us tear salaries so we could handle those cases in the meanwhile. so that's really a policy choice to you and if you're telling me public defender we don't care you have to live within our budget. i have no choice but to declare inavailability. we have an increase in 3 strike cases and life cases and there's a dramatic increase. that means we have to spend more time and emergency to investigate those cases.

let me tell you when you don't have the support to talk to witnesses the results can be drastic. my office has never been suited because the public defender received poor you representation. there was one case in los angeles where one person was investigated for lack of poor investigations that was a $5 million suit. people are adequately and fairly represented. the district attorney offices can bring an action and they don't have the same professional

responsibility. i don't think that's a valid comparison >> that's my point your comparing my office to the city attorney. >> our mission is to make sure every one of the 25 thousand clients. >> can we move to different questions out of all fairness you were the one who brought the fairness in the da's office. >> let me just say i'm supportive of the recommendation and i think supervisor gonzales has already laid out the salaries. i think the december analysis shows the streamlining of our office and how you've been to meet up to the constitutional requirement inform the office.

i think you started to say without those two or potentially investigator positions you myself may have to declare unavailability so i don't see it as a threat but as a realtor to our office i think it's largely a policy decision for this body and i think they need the staffing for the investigator positions. if i'm not mistaken supervisor gonzales says you're okay with the budget investigator recommendations >> and we accept their recommendation fully to make sure we stay within our budget. >> i see you just put on a few questions about some of the things you said.

you talked about the city attorney having discretion p are you saying there's no discretion in our office >> yes, it's up to the client. i can't say you, you know, we don't have enough investigators so we're going to plead out. if we did that we'd be breaching our professional responsibility to that client. if they decide to go to the hearing if it's not investigated my lawyer and might have a subject to discipline under the state ethics code so we need the resources. but wire noting talking about any investigators right now; right? >> what's happening the reason

i'm here is because we don't have existing fund and we hadn't hired anyone for a year we're not able to higher any new staff when a staff leaves. so we have a limited number of investigators that are doing felony and homicide cases. we can't replace their positions so that means i have to spread those cases among our existing staff but they're all above capacity. we're losing investigators because they've over worked. remember our investigators work mornz they work in the day and at night.

we're the only safety department we don't pay our investigators over time. unlike the police department but when i'm down 3 investigators. i'm trying a homicide case right now i can't say bleeding i can't have investigators for your case. i can't do that because my client has a constitutional right. is that would you would expect you don't have enough investigators so i can't provided representation to you. so i'm coming to you for guidance and if you're telling me, you know, so far as your

investigative needs go we're not going to provide you this funding therefore you're out of luck. what i would do >> hold on a second. so i appreciate you say that you said earlier we don't care what you're needs are. we just had a two hour session on hiv funding we face budget cuts. my issues is not so much you were given a budget. no more head count increases. f this is a budget that the board of supervisors signed on you're saying that - if we don't

acknowledge that then the budget process it meaning also. it runs the budget process meaning less and that's a big issue here. and to me that's the issue here and i don't hear i addressing the specifics and i get the tactic but this is a budget committee and you're supposed to be living within your budget >> i'm telling you we can't handle the cases await investigative support. so your telling me we can't have the investigative support we need you will have to choose to

start referring cases and we'll take the homicide cases and start referring those over the private bar immediately and that's going to cost the city more. the last time that happened it costs the city 4 times as much >> i will not operate under a threat here. >> i think this is a a horrible way to operate. >> it is to provide representation to people we can't do. >> i have a completely different point of view you have a mandate to operate within our budget and your threatening me and that's inappropriate.

>> i had a question back to supervisor mayor's comment in terms of the budget analysts report. specifically the suggestion to remove $94,000 i basically expressed that you could do that and you would work it out i want to know the specifics you want to do to that because those amounts are all salary related so clearly this is a projection that's needed at the end of the projection year so if this $94,000 is delete how do you plan to address this? >> one when we have vacancies that are coming up we won't fill those vacancies.

i know that we have two attorneys are long time employees in the office are going to be retire and weighing we won't replace them. we've had to take furloughs and we're able to save about $400,000 in that way. it's difficult to ask employees to take furloughs but we've done that before. i understand the city's facing tough times but i can't operate in a way that's going to provide inadequate recommendation to people >> the second question is during the time i asked for the other supplemental what was the result of that.

>> what happens the mayor did an across the board cut regardless of the need of that department and so our department was cut 1 i pledge allegiance to the flag $2 million so we downsized two attorneys and i came to the board i notified the board we would have to withdraw from a certain number of the says cases and the board decided not to fund s it and just in that next focus year so in other words to save 1 i pledge allegiance to the flag $2 million the city incurred 1 point that $3 million in all attorney costs so the board of supervisors approved the supplemental in the following years and our staffing level was

restored. and >> and i think you mentioned you would start what did you call it pushing cases out to the bar? and if we're not able to do a case we can send it out to the public bar. we have staff and a our attorneys handle a certain amount of cases they're paid an historical rate but private attorneys are paid an hourly rate so it's more expensive >> so i would submit some of your homicide cases to them rather than the lower end cases

that are less expensive tell me why and well, the two of the 3 investigators that are resigning have a large amount of homicide cases so if we don't have the experienced people to do those kinds homicide cases are where i could spend your life in prison at any time just so happens that 2 out of 3 investigators that are leaving are handling those kinds of cases. one of the investigators is handling 6 homicide cases this is the investigator who's leaving in april who do i give those homicide cases to?

we have - i can't simply spread those cases among our exist personnel because that's the caseload it's too large. if we could spread the cases among our existing staff but when we get to a breaking point it's my obligation to come to you and tell you that's what's happening to our office. keep in mind we haven't added any new employees to our officers you just appointed more personnel to the da's