Chair Brooks-Powers questions MOCJ on $50 million assigned counsel plan funding gap

I'm not sure if you all were able to listen in to Judge Zaya's testimony and questioning, but I wanted to give a few moments to see if so, if you had any reactions to any of the things that were discussed in that panel.

I thought it was a great, robust panel.

And we're looking forward to the questions that you have for us so that we can help illuminate more of what's happening with case processing.

Thank you.

Well, I'm going to start with a question that came to mind as he was reading his testimony.

One was that.

And I'll just read the line from the testimony.

But as a recent report from the New York City Bar Association highlighted, the New York City Assigned Counsel Plan, ACP, administration is understaffed and under-resourced

and is thus unable to provide panel attorneys with the support that they need.

In fact, according to the Bar Association's report, since 2018, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice has failed to access over $50 million that

Indigent Legal Services has allocated to the NYCACP under two separate contracts.

I just would like to get an understanding as to why Mach J has failed to pull down that $50 million.

Okay.

So I think we have to step a little bit back.

The assigned counsel plan is the...

Supervisory portion that sits in Machte that has two administrators that are appointed by the courts and then has supervising

attorneys that support the individual counsel that are appointed to the 18B panel.

So the actual attorneys that provide indigent legal services to clients are not in the assigned counsel plan.

They are the ones that are appointed.

Back in 2018, the assigned council plan was part of the mayor's office of criminal justice, which was also within City Hall.

As the ability to pull down funds for City Hall was hampered by not having a dedicated infrastructure, that...

change, that infrastructure that needed to happen, started in 2022 when Mach J

decided that if it was going to meet the needs that council and our constituents identified, which was not only making sure that the assigned council plan had resources, but also that we were able to pay our

partner providers on time that we needed to build infrastructure.

Since 2022, as council members, we have been in this work of building the infrastructure and moving the mayor's office of criminal justice into its own agency

to be able to access the funds that are necessary to do the things that need to happen for not only the assigned council plan, but also for the partners that provide some of the most critical essential services in the city.

In terms of now...

accessing those funds as an agency, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, in its budget code, can access the funds that now come from the state, because that's where much of the funding comes, into the Mayor's Office.

However, those funds have to then be put into Mach J's budget exactly, and so the budget is then...

accessible.

Much of the funds may not be drawn down into our budget.

So we spend what is actually in our budget to support the assigned council plan

and work with the indigent legal services as well as bar associations to really think about what the evolution of the assigned council plan should be and how it should be operating and working.