Both Quality, Cost Count

Even if a low bid from an out of town law firm doesn’t persuade Ventura County to forsake the outfit that has handled its backup public-defender duties for nearly two decades, it has forced a much needed examination of this sizable contract and the cost overruns that have become all too routine.

Nothing like a little competition to remind a private law firm that the public’s money should be spent twice as carefully as it spends its own.

A report in today’s Times by staff writer Catherine Saillant describes Ventura County officials’ growing concern with wasteful spending by Conflict Defense Associates (CDA), the local firm that for 18 years has represented the county’s indigent defendants when the public defender’s office declares a conflict of interest. This happens in about 10% of its cases, most often when more than one person is accused in the same crime.

In each of the past three years, CDA has blown through its budget and returned to county officials for more money--billing the county a total of $1.4 million in excess of its contractual amount.

Its lawyers blame the overruns on the three-strikes law and the high cost of defending death penalty cases, of which Ventura County has had several in recent years. But Saillant’s story describes such questionable expenditures as paying one investigator $210 to build file cabinets, paying another investigator $30 an hour to deliver clean clothes to a jailed inmate and paying a Ventura doctor $1,750 to evaluate an inmate at the County Jail, including $375 just to drive there from across town. The same doctor charged $2,000 to see a patient at a mental hospital in Norwalk, with travel charges of $1,250 for the 160-mile round-trip.

And although no reliable cost data exist to compare CDA’s performance with the public defender’s office, a straight per-cost analysis in 1992 showed that the private attorneys spent $623 per case compared to $187 by the public defender.

CDA’s contract was routinely renewed for years because there were no other bids. But this year, after the third consecutive overrun, county officials decided to aggressively seek bids by advertising in legal journals and on the Internet.

The call was answered by John A. Barker & Associates, a firm based in the San Joaquin Valley that handles similar work for five other California counties. Barker’s bid of $1.1 million was less than half of the $2.4 million for which CDA offered to do the work.

Rather than grab the bargain, Ventura County’s judges and county administrators rightly decided to take a closer look. Although CDA’s casual spending habits with taxpayers’ money clearly need to be brought under control, there is another dimension to the decision--quality of service.

By most accounts, CDA has done a good job of defending its clients. It has never had a case overturned because of shoddy work. For the county to grant the contract to Barker, it would need to be confident that his firm could do as well in ensuring that all defendants receive the competent, vigorous defense our justice system requires. His bargain rates must not be achieved by undermining the defense of impoverished suspects who are, after all, presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Barker’s firm has earned praise from the other counties he serves. He says he keeps his costs down by doing more investigative work in-house and by shuffling lawyers among his various offices, depending on the demand.

Ventura County’s judiciary will review the two firms’ final proposals and recommend one of them to the Board of Supervisors within the next two weeks. A decision is expected in July.

Without being influenced by the inertia of 18 years of habit and intertwined relationships, the judges and supervisors must look closely at both the cost and the quality of legal representation. When the future, even the life, of an indigent crime suspect hangs in the balance, clearly there are more important considerations than penny-pinching.

But after years of growing concerns by county budget watchers--and years of large overruns by CDA--it is good to finally have some competition for the contract. We hope whichever firm ultimately prevails will manage its budget as if the money were its own--not just an endless supply of tax dollars with plenty more available for the asking.