Procedures Used by Public Defender’s Office Keep Costs Low

Almost immediately, one thing stands out about cellular phone bills for the public defender’s office. They’re low.

And there appears to be a good reason: The Los Angeles County public defender’s office requires employees to buy their own cellular phones, pay their own bills, then seek reimbursement for business calls.

Although the merits of this approach seem obvious, the public defender’s office is the only department in county government to use it. Everywhere else, the county pays the bills up front, then relies on employees to review their bills--which come late, if at all--and repay the public treasury for personal calls.

If the bottom line is what’s most important, then the public defender’s office has found the right formula for balancing the good that cellular telephones can provide with the high cost of paying for them.

Through the first 11 months of fiscal year 1994-95, the average monthly bill for the 50 cellular phones in the public defender’s office was $33. By comparison, other city and county departments had hundreds of users with average bills 10 times that, and more.

Penny Van Bogaert, the office’s administrative deputy, says her department’s employees would use the cellular phones judiciously no matter what. But she said the fact that they pay their own bills--and must justify business calls by listing case numbers on which they were working--keeps costs to a minimum.

The department’s cellular phone users also know that any cheating will be uncovered because supervisors must double-check case numbers to make sure they are legitimate. Then Van Bogaert reviews every bill.

“Anything like over $40, I would look it up to see if they had followed procedures, if they had highlighted their calls, if they put the case number next to it,” Van Bogaert said. “It stands to reason. I think they use it [only] when it’s necessary.”

From her experience in other county departments, Van Bogaert said she has seen how cellular bills can get out of hand.

“In another department I worked in, I remember seeing a call for over three hours once,” said Van Bogaert, who has worked for the department of beaches and harbors and the chief administrative office. “That seemed pretty long to me.

“I have never seen any really extended calls in my time of looking at the bills here. They’re usually only fractions of minutes.”

Van Bogaert said the public defender’s office has only a small portion of its budget--about 12%--dedicated to supplies and services, such as phone bills. “So we have to be careful with every dollar.”

She does not know who devised the public defender’s system. The department opted for it, she said, because of its experiences with the system used by the rest of the county.

Twelve of the office’s first phones were owned by the county and subject to the standard billing system, which has been rife with problems. When the public defender’s office wanted to expand its number of cellular phones--mostly for investigators--it wanted a more efficient way to keep tabs on bills.

“After that initial experience with those 12 county-owned phones, we went to the other system,” Van Bogaert said. “If you don’t do it that way, all you’ve got is a big bill that the county has already paid. And the county is supposed to find the personal calls. It just made more sense to do it this way.”