AUGUSTA — Robert Ruffner put in a notice on Tuesday asking to withdraw as the attorney for two defendants facing criminal charges in Kennebec County.

A day earlier, he did the same in Knox County. And, on Wednesday, he was preparing notices for Cumberland County courts, withdrawing as attorney for several dozen defendants.

“I can’t properly represent my clients at $50 an hour,” Ruffner said Wednesday. “You can’t provide office staff, an office and provide income and health insurance at $50 an hour.” That’s the rate paid by the state for lawyers who are appointed to represent indigent defendants — those who face jail time but can’t afford an attorney.

And the money for attorney bills submitted since May 11 won’t be paid until July 5 or 6.

The cash shortfall has put some attorneys in a pinch and, Ruffner said, could lead to a “systematic erosion” of defendants’ rights to be represented well in court.

John Pelletier, executive director of the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, said the commission ran out of money May 24. so attorney bills submitted after May 10 haven’t been paid.

“The costs we incurred this year are more than our budget,” he added. “The lawyers will wait for payment longer than they’re accustomed to.”

The commission, which is an independent state agency, was set up to “provide efficient, high-quality representation to indigent citizens who are entitled to counsel at state expense under the United States Constitution or under the Constitution or statutes of Maine,” according to its website. “The commission uses assigned private attorneys … to provide representation to criminal defendants, juvenile defendants, parents in child protective cases, and people facing involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital who are indigent.”

The budget for legal representation for people facing possible jail time if convicted is $10.5 million for the fiscal year ending June 30.

There’s even less money — only $10 million — for the next fiscal year, and that pot will be reduced by the amount needed to pay attorneys for this year’s work, which could be as high as $900,000, Pelletier estimated.

Put over the edge

Pelletier said Wednesday that the commission will ask the Legislature for more funding as part of the supplemental budget process. Meantime, Pelletier said he’s heard from a handful of lawyers who say they can no longer afford to take on defendants whose legal fees are paid by the state.

Ruffner, however, appears to be the only one who is withdrawing from cases.

In his notices to the courts on behalf of the clients, Ruffner wrote, “The current assigned counsel rate of $50 per hour has forced counsel to reduce his staffing level to zero and leaves him unable to provide the resources that to ensure the proper level of representation to his clients.”

Ruffner wrote that he could not ethically assist the state in “the systematic erosion of all defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights.”

Ruffner, who lives in Yarmouth, laid off his office staff and closed his private office a year ago and shares quarters in Portland with other attorneys and businesses.

“The fact that I can’t pay my rent now is what put me over the edge,” he said Wednesday.

State Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, who is on the Legislature’s Appropriations & Financial Affairs Committee, said he advocated for additional funding at the end of the legislative session to pay the court-appointed lawyers and was disappointed to get only $400,000.

“As a practicing lawyer, I understand the problems that this funding shortfall presents for those who do court-appointed cases,” Katz said. He said the Legislature will have to revisit the issue in January.

“In the meantime I know the chief justice will be working with all those in the system to see if there can be an more cost savings consistent with the constitutional rights of a defendant to counsel in many cases,” Katz said. “For instance, I know the district attorneys will be asked to look more carefully at the decisions they make at the initial arraignment stage of whether to ask for jail time.”

A long-term solution is to increase the amount paid to attorneys per hour.

“It hasn’t increased since 1999 and people just can’t run a law office on that, particularly if they are forced to wait to get paid,” Katz said. “By any measure compared with other states, Maine’s spending for this constitutionally-required expense is very, very low.”

‘Kicking the can’

Pelletier said two changes this year increased costs: the average cost per attorney bill went from $389 to $401, and the commission expects to get 1,600 more of those bills than the 25,000 it got last year.

Pelletier said there is no way to determine the number of defendants represented from the billing.

The end-of-year shortfall occurred when the court administered the system before the commission’s creation in June 2009.

“We routinely ran out of money and we routinely pushed bills into the next fiscal year,” said Mary Ann Lynch, government and media counsel for the Maine Judicial Branch. “We were just kicking the can down the road.”

She said the practice of delaying payments to vendors is not unusual in state government.

“From our experience, Maine lawyers were patient before.” Lynch said. “They know that they were going to get paid.”

Ruffner, who began his legal career as a prosecutor, turned to defense work a decade ago and started the Maine Indigent Defense Center out of his office in 2007 to try to improve the system.

He said the structure is better with a commission, but that the state needs to pay its bills.

“I don’t know why the state thinks it can get away without paying for constitutionally required counsel,” he said. “This is not optional.”

Betty Adams — 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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