Maine lawmakers didn’t budget enough money to pay for constitutionally mandated lawyers during the next fiscal year, members of the commission that oversees the system said.
There’s a $13 million funding gap for the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services, which means it will run out of money and not be able to pay lawyers starting in April 2026 until the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2026.
Maine’s two-year budget signed Monday by Gov. Janet Mills is $11.3 billion. The commission requested $64.5 million a year and received roughly $51 million per year.
The commission manages the state’s list of lawyers who take on low-income, or indigent, defendants, as well as the public defender offices. Without the ability to pay indigent defense lawyers the system is very likely to collapse, public defense services Executive Director Jim Billings said. The number of people waiting for court-appointed lawyers could balloon after large strides were made to fix the constitutional crisis.
In January, roughly 1,000 people were waiting for lawyers but that number is down to about 230 people as of Monday, according to data from public defense services. For indigent defense cases, private lawyers bill the commission $150 an hour, and there will be more than 325,000 billable hours this fiscal year for roughly $48.7 million, Billing said. For private practice, it’s usually $300 to $400 an hour.
“lf people stop taking cases because they heard that we’re going to run out of money, that 1,000 cases on that list is gonna look like child’s play, if people stop taking cases,” Billings said. “In fact, if we do run out of money, the worst case scenario happens and we have to tell people we can no longer pay you.”
Public defenders offices handle about 30 percent of the cases in 10 counties, including Penobscot County. Private lawyers who become members of a roster take on the other 70 percent of cases. Maine’s most populated counties, like York and the midcoast, have no public defenders and private lawyers take on 100 percent of cases.
People sitting in jail for more than 14 days without a lawyer is a violation of the Sixth Amendment, a Maine judge recently ruled. In the time since, the public defense services worked to erase that backlog, said Logan Perkins, the district defender of Highlands Region Public Defenders, which covers Penobscot County.
Penobscot County had more than 300 cases pending without lawyers a year ago; now it’s well below 100 cases, Perkins said. That’s due to a combination of the public defender’s office opening and an increase of private lawyers taking cases.
All of that progress goes away if the commission runs out of money, she said.
“The Legislature has decided that they don’t want to adequately fund the criminal legal system so we are going to be in a crisis,” Perkins said. “We are going to have a shortage of attorneys. We’re going to have people sitting in jail without attorneys.”
Mills will closely evaluate the commission’s budget and “work with the Legislature in the next legislative session to consider what needs may be reasonable — and what the Commission itself can do — to continue to address this issue,” she said in a statement.
“In the meantime, lawyers who represent indigent defendants should be confident they will be fully paid for their work,” Mills said.
The best way to fix the issue is for an emergency bill during the short session in January, Billings said. However, that will require political will, he said.
“I wish that the Legislature was clear-eyed and balanced in their willingness to adequately fund a balanced criminal legal system, but they’re not and what that means is that our civil liberties are going to suffer,” Perkins said.
A bill passed in April, which Mills allowed to become law without her signature, provides just more than an additional $1.6 million in funding and five new positions to work in Portland. However, those new public defenders will quickly become saturated with cases and not be able to take on new cases, Billings said.
Billings said he tried to talk with legislators on the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee during the budget season to explain how the lack of funding will create massive problems within the criminal justice system.
He didn’t receive responses from lawmakers, he said.
“There’s a lack of will to face the music and what they’ve done is kick the can down the road,” Billings said. “Unfortunately, things could get a lot worse than they were even six months ago if this doesn’t get addressed very early in the next session.”
Mills vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have clarified when someone is entitled to legal counsel at the state’s expense.