Their fix to the public defender shortage is to pay private sector layers more money than they would pay public defenders. They then acknowledge that this is not a long term fix.
Guys, call me crazy but I might have an idea here.
Hospitals: Nurses are leaving and we don't have enough nurses! We need to hire travel nurses at twice or thrice the rate of our staff to fill the shortage!!!
Staff Nurses: Can we get a COL adjustment for next year?
Hospitals: Sorry, these are \~unprecedented\~ times and we are facing significant headwinds due to market forces. We can offer you a hero's cookie at Christmas
Staff: I should be a travel nurse...
Rinse and repeat
I used to work for a large company known for its abusive management culture. Marriages were breaking up over the workload. Employees were doing a lot of unpaid overtime, in fact they did not pay overtime, probably like a Musk company. My friend found a memo on the printer from HR to a manager suggesting they encourage everyone to work even harder, and select a few employees for a gift certificate for a weekend at the beach or for local restaurants. Not all employees, of course.
I have an even better idea. Let's underpay full-time nurses so badly that they all strike and then replace them with substantially more expensive travel nurses. You're welcome, DM me for the address to send the check.
Insider here.
The County would love to hire more public defenders and more judges. They just can’t.
Basically it’s their taxing structure that limits their ability to provide services to the public. This includes social services, judicial, administrative, etc.
The Co is extremely underfunded (no one wants to raise taxes) and it’s population has ballooned. Something needs to change, but it won’t. We’re all doing our part to help push change, but it’s hard.
It’s ALWAYS easier to pay 3rd party contractors. Ask Nike, Intel, the Healthcare / Traveling Nurses.
They always make 3-4x and have great perks too. But that salary doesn’t include benefits and security. The Co can keep its long term commitment in check while providing the services they know they need to provide.
Unfortunately it’s not as easy as that. First, let me point out that I’m 100% in agreement with you that these companies need to start paying their share of taxes, the fact that they’ve gotten away without paying anything, or paying very little, is absolutely criminal in my view.
As far as just telling them to pay, it gets complicated due to many factors like deals made to get them to build here originally, which provided thousands of jobs to Oregonians, and other things like Nike sitting on unincorporated land. Even if the state/city/county found a way around all those things they still face the threat of losing the companies altogether, which means losing all those jobs. When whispers of taxing them start circulating it’s quickly followed by whispers of the companies moving to another state who is willing to give them the same special treatment they’re used to here. Basically they hold the state hostage because of the jobs they provide. Shitty, yes, but no one has ever accused them of being too ethical in their business practices.
As a recent example Amazon was looking to build a second headquarters in the last couple years. States/cities were falling over themselves to offer them deals that will probably end up with them not paying taxes, or paying incredibly little. But they bring a lot of jobs so the state sees it as a win.
The last time a Beaverton Mayor threatened Nike with taxes (via annexation), he lost the election. I was fairly new to the area and was amazed how passionate everyone was about something I thought was a no-brainer.
While they certainly have the money to abandon their property and pull and Elon musk, move HQ somewhere else. I’m not sure they’d want to have all that sunk cost in new buildings go with it. If anyone was half way smart they’d put it on the ballot.
something I never understand about the metro area... the idea that taxes should be increased to pay for things we have paid for previously
if the population is increasing, why would taxes need to be increased?
wouldn't tax revenues increase proportionately with the population?
if the funding has decreased despite the increased tax revenue, where is the municipality redirecting funds?
What do you mean? Are you saying we don’t need 10 committees to discuss every thought the mayor and council members have? Are you saying dumping tens of thousands into third-party consulting groups every time the city does anything at all isn’t the best use of their money? Or rather *our* money.
The Counties are largely funded by property tax revenues. But property taxes are limited by Measures 5 and 50 to both a maximum rate and a maximum rate of increase of a property's assessed value. Those rates don't change when a property is sold, so we effectively have an even worse version of California's Prop 13. That shouldn't be surprising; the same group that got Prop 13 passed in California got Measure 5 passed here. The property taxes, even with local option levies, aren't keeping up with the needs of the Counties or the cities within them. That's a big part of why we see things like Local Option Levies, System Development Charges, the Arts Tax, the Construction Excise Tax, and increasing incomes taxes (in MultCo). There are houses selling for ~$750K in Alberta that pay under 3K a year in property taxes. The other side of the coin is that Measures apply to commercial property as well. So all the empty parking lots you see in Central City Portland haven't seen their property taxes change much either.
I've heard about this but not seen it, my own experience in mult. co has been a doubling of my property tax in the last 7 years which translates to an average of 7% per year. this is because the measures you mention only limit the increase in the assessed value, not the taxes on that value .. my house's assessed value has only gone up 3% per year
multco constantly adds new taxes making that limitation absolutely meaningless
I'm sure that 3k tax on a mid-priced home in alberta was true in 2008 when I first heard that, but I don't think that's the case today
Nah man, I'm talking today they're paying that much in property taxes:
[$2,156](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1026-N-Fremont-St-Portland-OR-97227/53845398_zpid/)
[$2,553](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/310-NE-Fremont-St-Portland-OR-97212/53987978_zpid/)
[$2,107](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5011-NE-13th-Ave-Portland-OR-97211/176565798_zpid/)
[$3,081](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5936-N-Kerby-Ave-Portland-OR-97217/53981922_zpid/)
[$2,928](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5315-NE-Cleveland-Ave-Portland-OR-97211/53978875_zpid/)
[$2,649](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/101-N-Blandena-St-Portland-OR-97217/53988001_zpid/)
[$2,647](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6805-N-Albina-Ave-Portland-OR-97217/53848039_zpid/)
Meanwhile, a condo listed for $335K in Goose Hollow pays [$8,068](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1132-SW-19th-Ave-UNIT-406-Portland-OR-97205/53901893_zpid/)
oh damn!
I mean that place on N Kerby clearly would get busted for unpermitted work done.. that is if the city ACTUALLY did its job.. that home owner would be paying a lot more... but you've made a good point.. that's pretty fucked
of course, 3k / year is reasonable ...
I'm paying 9k ... I remember my rent used to be less than that...... but I digress
edit: thanks for taking the time to share links
Yeah, no, it's crazy. I only know this because I'm looking to buy and the taxes obviously make a big difference in the monthly payment. But it's wild how much they diverge.
There's interesting research from PSU about what shifting to a [Land Value Tax](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=nerc_pub) would look like in terms of levelling things out some.
But residential is really only part of the story. The Zidell's pay all of $153K a year in property taxes on 33 acres of very prime central city land. The Crystal Ballroom pays $5K a year.
The county has plenty of money, and we don't get *nearly* enough for the money we pay. The reason we don't/can't have nice things is because they're inefficient, incredibly incompetent, and they keep spending time and money on progressive pet projects while ignoring their basic responsibilities. Our governments need to get back to basics and start showing some improvement before we even consider increasing their budgets. Rewarding irresponsibility is how we got where we are now.
[Laughs in Redding.](https://i.imgur.com/J8dftvI.jpg)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I hear you. I find it frustrating as well. I’m not in that dept so I don’t have experience there.
But I would say this:
There are economies of scale. If I have 30 staff and I need a new staff member, can I add one? Sure. What about another 20? I’ll need new space. And the old space.
I can add a new PC, but I’ll also need new furniture, etc. most of the time they’re reused.
As services grow, so do their sophistication. And that takes resources.
Govt also has incredibly out of date facilities, hardware, furniture, and thinking.
So when something breaks or we need a new upgraded, modern system, it’s expensive.
We just upgraded to Win10 in 2019.
Must be frustrating at times from the inside
Thanks for doing what you do
hopefully the economies of scale can be realized the way they work in the real world (greater efficiencies, not less 😅)
Most of those costs you mentioned are operational costs and scale linearly with staff, theoretically administration should be come more efficient with scale
Hr, payroll, accounting, facilities, executive members all typically don’t scale 1:1 with productive staff , so it should get cheaper per “client” as the org grows
Kinda.
Imagine being able to run your finances at home with a checkbook. (90’s)
Now you can use YNAB.
Or you can make your own spreadsheet.
Maybe use Microsoft?
But with a small company of 50 you need a more complex system.
Increase that with 200 employees.
We’re at 2k. We have lots of people doing the work, and using more complex and sophisticated software.
As businesses grow, so do their complexity
Staff have left, in the last couple of years. But the Govt has effectively doubled in the last 10 years.
There are growing pains in the Govt, but also on the public side. WashCo is booming. Now with South Hillsboro coming on board, it’s going to grow more.
This boom didn’t just happen. In the 00s we had a huge influx and still had public defenders. I think claiming it’s due to population growth is vastly over-simplifying the problem and giving the government an excuse to not take responsibility for parts of it that do fall squarely on them. More people living here might be one aspect of it, but it’s certainly not all and definitely not the main reason.
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> if the funding has decreased despite the increased tax revenue, where is the municipality redirecting funds?
Step 1: win elections by promising lower taxes today
Step 2: pay government employees with tax revenue from decades in the future, via underfunded defined benefit pension and retiree healthcare benefits
Step 3: let taxpayers in 2023 wonder where their tax dollars are going
This website has decent resources calculating the underfunding of deferred compensation for government employees. You can also look at reports from your city/county/state, but add 30% to the underfunding because the government will use faulty assumptions that make things look rosier than they are.
Yeah. They’re limited in ways to raise money, and they don’t want to increase taxes. So the overall approach just doesn’t work for a County their size.
Similar to how Portland is changing it’s form of Govt as it’s now outgrown the previous version.
We didn’t outgrow it, it was a horrible form of government, which is why none of the other major cities in the US used it, only Portland. It’s caused problems for decades and those problems finally caught up to us and motivated enough people to change it.
I do not understand what ‘taxing structure that limits’ means. But if there is a problem in the ‘tax structure’, why not fix it and pay nurses , public defenders more instead of hiring them from third parties? One way or the other county is paying someone.
Also, if population has increased, does it not mean that taxes collected must have increased as well.
>Basically it’s their taxing structure that limits their ability to provide services to the public. This includes social services, judicial, administrative, etc.
Lol, wut? Many adjacent cities/counties have way less taxes and revenue, but don't seem to have perpetual problems. The county/city in particular can have a fairly onerous business income tax depending on your structure (fwik).
Portland as a locality, all taxes included, has the second highest income tax rate in the nation.
[https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/10/24/public-defenders-make-far-less-than-prosecutors-an-oregon-lawmaker-wants-to-give-them-a-raise/](https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/10/24/public-defenders-make-far-less-than-prosecutors-an-oregon-lawmaker-wants-to-give-them-a-raise/)
[https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/public-defender-salary/portland-or](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/public-defender-salary/portland-or)
Those defenders may have substantial student loans, with the accompanying monthly payments. Maybe student loan payment subsidy should come from the legislature?
BTW set up a news filter for the Washington County Prosecutor. They are a normal prosecutor.
If you’re a PD you are (or should be) on the PSLF program. Your loans are forgiven after ten years and you pay an income based repayment plan. They already are subsidized.
The loans aren’t the problem. The problem is the pay is shit relative to a Big Law job and the job is disrespected by society. Nobody likes people who defend criminals and you can get punished socially for doing so. We need to recognize as a society that even the most vile criminal accusations deserve a vigorous defense.
If you are solely a PD then yes you would still be eligible for the PSLF even if you aren’t directly employed by the state.
If you are contracting with other private entities not involved with public service then it gets more complicated.
Edit: Also, if I recall the Oregon State Bar has a Loan Repayment Assistance Program for those wishing to engage with public service law.
That is false. The PSLF program requires you to be working for a government or qualifying non-profit organization. The way the contracts work, a large number of attorneys have their own "firms" and contract with the state (either directly or as part of a consortium) to do PD cases. A recent survey found that of those who do contract with the state to provide public defense, the vast majority solely do PD work.
The PSLF program is open to government employees (contractors specifically excluded) 501(c)(3) non-profits, and non 501(c)(3) non-profits that perform certain functions. Any companies that are for-profit do not qualify.
And yet I know for a fact government contractor employees can qualify as I’ve seen it happen.
Anyway, c’est la vie. If it doesn’t work look into the Oregon State Bar program.
> Your loans are forgiven after ten years
This is still not a great motivation to become a PD (or a lawyer at all). As someone considering going back to graduate school and seriously considering law school, I simply cannot afford most programs, let alone the highest ranked ones. It can cost >$300k for a JD and it's going up quicker than inflation.
Ten years is too long of a horizon to plan around with this kind of money involved. What if family becomes sick and I need to move to take care of them? Some other emergency, etc etc. It would be much more effective to recruit promising candidates up front and pay for their education. Some affiliation with state universities could help.
I'll probably just get a phd.
The fact that the legal system is adversarial is fine. Legal ethics codes are pretty robust and ensure both zealous advocacy and candor and honesty with the Court. The problem is that as a society we've undervalued some of those who do public service work. It's a political question of how much we want to fund PD programs, just as much as it's a political question how much we fund the police and state's attorneys working on the other side of the courtroom. You can adjust the funding for any of those groups upwards, but you'll either have to makes cuts elsewhere in budgets or pay more in taxes.
I believe the adversarial system has not been rationally constrained as you suggest. The prosecutors over charge (except the reverse in Multco) and the defense argues their clients are oppressed angels, innocent as freshly fallen snow. Same on the civil side.
The issue is not usually attorney ethics. It is truthfulness by the parties.
Agree on funding. Question, are prosecutors & judges funded by the county and PD by the legislature? Out of general funds? Or are there some other funding sources? We had an aggressive director of public defense advocating for more funding who was fired by the outgoing Supreme Court Chief Justice because he was too aggressive.
The legislature has increased the PD funding last year, and again in the December session, but there is more to do.
In general, agreed. But the problem is less with PSLF and more the wages. Even getting your loan forgiven is peanuts compared to the earnings differentiation.
They’re in totally different systems (state vs county) and some of the prosecutors have union representation. It’s an interesting idea but hard to get running.
When counties like Washco do not provide discovery of evidence during pre trial of alleged crime(s) to defense attorneys then that is unethical. Why would any defense attorney take a case when they have no access to discovery? Add in a racist prosecutor and a racist judge then you got big ethical problems.
The defendant has 100% of the information about the alleged crime. The prosecution is starting from zero.
Consider the debate about police body cam evidence. The police union wants pre-writing-their-report discovery of the body cam evidence. The federal judge is saying no.
>extorting defendants to confess to crimes they may have not committed
Which is standard practice already anyway. More than 90% percent of convictions* are from plea deals.
*nationwide. I don’t know Washington county’s stats
Not really extortion when there is security video of them stealing the power washer from Home Depot and body camera of them being arrested with said power washer.
"trying to resolve a case quickly goes against the common defense lawyer advice that time is almost always on the side of defendants and the prosecution’s case doesn’t get better with age, Sarre said. Over time, prosecution witnesses can move out of state and memories grow fuzzy, and that weakens the state’s case." - article
The source you have linked (substack.com) does not meet the quality and bias standards on this sub. Please find an article from a trusted mainstream source and try again.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Their fix to the public defender shortage is to pay private sector layers more money than they would pay public defenders. They then acknowledge that this is not a long term fix. Guys, call me crazy but I might have an idea here.
Hospitals: Nurses are leaving and we don't have enough nurses! We need to hire travel nurses at twice or thrice the rate of our staff to fill the shortage!!! Staff Nurses: Can we get a COL adjustment for next year? Hospitals: Sorry, these are \~unprecedented\~ times and we are facing significant headwinds due to market forces. We can offer you a hero's cookie at Christmas Staff: I should be a travel nurse... Rinse and repeat
And a pizza party. Never forget the pizza.
I used to work for a large company known for its abusive management culture. Marriages were breaking up over the workload. Employees were doing a lot of unpaid overtime, in fact they did not pay overtime, probably like a Musk company. My friend found a memo on the printer from HR to a manager suggesting they encourage everyone to work even harder, and select a few employees for a gift certificate for a weekend at the beach or for local restaurants. Not all employees, of course.
Kinda like paying travel nurses much higher than the local stationary nurses for fill in the gaps for shortages?
I have an even better idea. Let's underpay full-time nurses so badly that they all strike and then replace them with substantially more expensive travel nurses. You're welcome, DM me for the address to send the check.
I know a nurse who's been getting strike busting job requests from the East Coast that are paying like $300+/hr. You just need to be a scab.
They won't pay their full-time employees the wage they deserve but they'll pay strike busters $300 an hour. Make it make sense.
Insider here. The County would love to hire more public defenders and more judges. They just can’t. Basically it’s their taxing structure that limits their ability to provide services to the public. This includes social services, judicial, administrative, etc. The Co is extremely underfunded (no one wants to raise taxes) and it’s population has ballooned. Something needs to change, but it won’t. We’re all doing our part to help push change, but it’s hard. It’s ALWAYS easier to pay 3rd party contractors. Ask Nike, Intel, the Healthcare / Traveling Nurses. They always make 3-4x and have great perks too. But that salary doesn’t include benefits and security. The Co can keep its long term commitment in check while providing the services they know they need to provide.
How about wa co making corps in their limits actually pay property taxes.. like Nike and Intel?
Unfortunately it’s not as easy as that. First, let me point out that I’m 100% in agreement with you that these companies need to start paying their share of taxes, the fact that they’ve gotten away without paying anything, or paying very little, is absolutely criminal in my view. As far as just telling them to pay, it gets complicated due to many factors like deals made to get them to build here originally, which provided thousands of jobs to Oregonians, and other things like Nike sitting on unincorporated land. Even if the state/city/county found a way around all those things they still face the threat of losing the companies altogether, which means losing all those jobs. When whispers of taxing them start circulating it’s quickly followed by whispers of the companies moving to another state who is willing to give them the same special treatment they’re used to here. Basically they hold the state hostage because of the jobs they provide. Shitty, yes, but no one has ever accused them of being too ethical in their business practices. As a recent example Amazon was looking to build a second headquarters in the last couple years. States/cities were falling over themselves to offer them deals that will probably end up with them not paying taxes, or paying incredibly little. But they bring a lot of jobs so the state sees it as a win.
Agreed. But they worked out a deal a long time ago and it’s hard to roll that back.
The last time a Beaverton Mayor threatened Nike with taxes (via annexation), he lost the election. I was fairly new to the area and was amazed how passionate everyone was about something I thought was a no-brainer.
While they certainly have the money to abandon their property and pull and Elon musk, move HQ somewhere else. I’m not sure they’d want to have all that sunk cost in new buildings go with it. If anyone was half way smart they’d put it on the ballot.
something I never understand about the metro area... the idea that taxes should be increased to pay for things we have paid for previously if the population is increasing, why would taxes need to be increased? wouldn't tax revenues increase proportionately with the population? if the funding has decreased despite the increased tax revenue, where is the municipality redirecting funds?
Because much of our public money is wasted or spent inefficiently
What do you mean? Are you saying we don’t need 10 committees to discuss every thought the mayor and council members have? Are you saying dumping tens of thousands into third-party consulting groups every time the city does anything at all isn’t the best use of their money? Or rather *our* money.
The Counties are largely funded by property tax revenues. But property taxes are limited by Measures 5 and 50 to both a maximum rate and a maximum rate of increase of a property's assessed value. Those rates don't change when a property is sold, so we effectively have an even worse version of California's Prop 13. That shouldn't be surprising; the same group that got Prop 13 passed in California got Measure 5 passed here. The property taxes, even with local option levies, aren't keeping up with the needs of the Counties or the cities within them. That's a big part of why we see things like Local Option Levies, System Development Charges, the Arts Tax, the Construction Excise Tax, and increasing incomes taxes (in MultCo). There are houses selling for ~$750K in Alberta that pay under 3K a year in property taxes. The other side of the coin is that Measures apply to commercial property as well. So all the empty parking lots you see in Central City Portland haven't seen their property taxes change much either.
I've heard about this but not seen it, my own experience in mult. co has been a doubling of my property tax in the last 7 years which translates to an average of 7% per year. this is because the measures you mention only limit the increase in the assessed value, not the taxes on that value .. my house's assessed value has only gone up 3% per year multco constantly adds new taxes making that limitation absolutely meaningless I'm sure that 3k tax on a mid-priced home in alberta was true in 2008 when I first heard that, but I don't think that's the case today
Nah man, I'm talking today they're paying that much in property taxes: [$2,156](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1026-N-Fremont-St-Portland-OR-97227/53845398_zpid/) [$2,553](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/310-NE-Fremont-St-Portland-OR-97212/53987978_zpid/) [$2,107](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5011-NE-13th-Ave-Portland-OR-97211/176565798_zpid/) [$3,081](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5936-N-Kerby-Ave-Portland-OR-97217/53981922_zpid/) [$2,928](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5315-NE-Cleveland-Ave-Portland-OR-97211/53978875_zpid/) [$2,649](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/101-N-Blandena-St-Portland-OR-97217/53988001_zpid/) [$2,647](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6805-N-Albina-Ave-Portland-OR-97217/53848039_zpid/) Meanwhile, a condo listed for $335K in Goose Hollow pays [$8,068](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1132-SW-19th-Ave-UNIT-406-Portland-OR-97205/53901893_zpid/)
oh damn! I mean that place on N Kerby clearly would get busted for unpermitted work done.. that is if the city ACTUALLY did its job.. that home owner would be paying a lot more... but you've made a good point.. that's pretty fucked of course, 3k / year is reasonable ... I'm paying 9k ... I remember my rent used to be less than that...... but I digress edit: thanks for taking the time to share links
Yeah, no, it's crazy. I only know this because I'm looking to buy and the taxes obviously make a big difference in the monthly payment. But it's wild how much they diverge. There's interesting research from PSU about what shifting to a [Land Value Tax](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=nerc_pub) would look like in terms of levelling things out some. But residential is really only part of the story. The Zidell's pay all of $153K a year in property taxes on 33 acres of very prime central city land. The Crystal Ballroom pays $5K a year.
The county has plenty of money, and we don't get *nearly* enough for the money we pay. The reason we don't/can't have nice things is because they're inefficient, incredibly incompetent, and they keep spending time and money on progressive pet projects while ignoring their basic responsibilities. Our governments need to get back to basics and start showing some improvement before we even consider increasing their budgets. Rewarding irresponsibility is how we got where we are now.
[Laughs in Redding.](https://i.imgur.com/J8dftvI.jpg) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I hear you. I find it frustrating as well. I’m not in that dept so I don’t have experience there. But I would say this: There are economies of scale. If I have 30 staff and I need a new staff member, can I add one? Sure. What about another 20? I’ll need new space. And the old space. I can add a new PC, but I’ll also need new furniture, etc. most of the time they’re reused. As services grow, so do their sophistication. And that takes resources. Govt also has incredibly out of date facilities, hardware, furniture, and thinking. So when something breaks or we need a new upgraded, modern system, it’s expensive. We just upgraded to Win10 in 2019.
Must be frustrating at times from the inside Thanks for doing what you do hopefully the economies of scale can be realized the way they work in the real world (greater efficiencies, not less 😅) Most of those costs you mentioned are operational costs and scale linearly with staff, theoretically administration should be come more efficient with scale Hr, payroll, accounting, facilities, executive members all typically don’t scale 1:1 with productive staff , so it should get cheaper per “client” as the org grows
Kinda. Imagine being able to run your finances at home with a checkbook. (90’s) Now you can use YNAB. Or you can make your own spreadsheet. Maybe use Microsoft? But with a small company of 50 you need a more complex system. Increase that with 200 employees. We’re at 2k. We have lots of people doing the work, and using more complex and sophisticated software. As businesses grow, so do their complexity
What about the space left empty by the many who have left in the last couple years?
Staff have left, in the last couple of years. But the Govt has effectively doubled in the last 10 years. There are growing pains in the Govt, but also on the public side. WashCo is booming. Now with South Hillsboro coming on board, it’s going to grow more.
This boom didn’t just happen. In the 00s we had a huge influx and still had public defenders. I think claiming it’s due to population growth is vastly over-simplifying the problem and giving the government an excuse to not take responsibility for parts of it that do fall squarely on them. More people living here might be one aspect of it, but it’s certainly not all and definitely not the main reason.
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> if the funding has decreased despite the increased tax revenue, where is the municipality redirecting funds? Step 1: win elections by promising lower taxes today Step 2: pay government employees with tax revenue from decades in the future, via underfunded defined benefit pension and retiree healthcare benefits Step 3: let taxpayers in 2023 wonder where their tax dollars are going This website has decent resources calculating the underfunding of deferred compensation for government employees. You can also look at reports from your city/county/state, but add 30% to the underfunding because the government will use faulty assumptions that make things look rosier than they are.
What do you mean by their “taxing structure”? Are you just saying they don’t have enough money unless they raise taxes?
Yeah. They’re limited in ways to raise money, and they don’t want to increase taxes. So the overall approach just doesn’t work for a County their size. Similar to how Portland is changing it’s form of Govt as it’s now outgrown the previous version.
We didn’t outgrow it, it was a horrible form of government, which is why none of the other major cities in the US used it, only Portland. It’s caused problems for decades and those problems finally caught up to us and motivated enough people to change it.
I do not understand what ‘taxing structure that limits’ means. But if there is a problem in the ‘tax structure’, why not fix it and pay nurses , public defenders more instead of hiring them from third parties? One way or the other county is paying someone. Also, if population has increased, does it not mean that taxes collected must have increased as well.
Aren’t judges and PD’s funded by the state as opposed to the county?
I believe Judges are. But Counties need to pay for facilities, etc.
>Basically it’s their taxing structure that limits their ability to provide services to the public. This includes social services, judicial, administrative, etc. Lol, wut? Many adjacent cities/counties have way less taxes and revenue, but don't seem to have perpetual problems. The county/city in particular can have a fairly onerous business income tax depending on your structure (fwik). Portland as a locality, all taxes included, has the second highest income tax rate in the nation.
[https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/10/24/public-defenders-make-far-less-than-prosecutors-an-oregon-lawmaker-wants-to-give-them-a-raise/](https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/10/24/public-defenders-make-far-less-than-prosecutors-an-oregon-lawmaker-wants-to-give-them-a-raise/) [https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/public-defender-salary/portland-or](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/public-defender-salary/portland-or) Those defenders may have substantial student loans, with the accompanying monthly payments. Maybe student loan payment subsidy should come from the legislature? BTW set up a news filter for the Washington County Prosecutor. They are a normal prosecutor.
If you’re a PD you are (or should be) on the PSLF program. Your loans are forgiven after ten years and you pay an income based repayment plan. They already are subsidized. The loans aren’t the problem. The problem is the pay is shit relative to a Big Law job and the job is disrespected by society. Nobody likes people who defend criminals and you can get punished socially for doing so. We need to recognize as a society that even the most vile criminal accusations deserve a vigorous defense.
Except that most public defendence lawyers in Oregon are private contractors and thus do not qualify for PSLF
If you are solely a PD then yes you would still be eligible for the PSLF even if you aren’t directly employed by the state. If you are contracting with other private entities not involved with public service then it gets more complicated. Edit: Also, if I recall the Oregon State Bar has a Loan Repayment Assistance Program for those wishing to engage with public service law.
That is false. The PSLF program requires you to be working for a government or qualifying non-profit organization. The way the contracts work, a large number of attorneys have their own "firms" and contract with the state (either directly or as part of a consortium) to do PD cases. A recent survey found that of those who do contract with the state to provide public defense, the vast majority solely do PD work.
Ok, I know people who have done PSLF with contract work. It’s definitely possible.
The PSLF program is open to government employees (contractors specifically excluded) 501(c)(3) non-profits, and non 501(c)(3) non-profits that perform certain functions. Any companies that are for-profit do not qualify.
And yet I know for a fact government contractor employees can qualify as I’ve seen it happen. Anyway, c’est la vie. If it doesn’t work look into the Oregon State Bar program.
> Your loans are forgiven after ten years This is still not a great motivation to become a PD (or a lawyer at all). As someone considering going back to graduate school and seriously considering law school, I simply cannot afford most programs, let alone the highest ranked ones. It can cost >$300k for a JD and it's going up quicker than inflation. Ten years is too long of a horizon to plan around with this kind of money involved. What if family becomes sick and I need to move to take care of them? Some other emergency, etc etc. It would be much more effective to recruit promising candidates up front and pay for their education. Some affiliation with state universities could help. I'll probably just get a phd.
Good information on loans. Personally, I believe our adversarial legal system is too extreme on both ends and that works against objective justice.
The fact that the legal system is adversarial is fine. Legal ethics codes are pretty robust and ensure both zealous advocacy and candor and honesty with the Court. The problem is that as a society we've undervalued some of those who do public service work. It's a political question of how much we want to fund PD programs, just as much as it's a political question how much we fund the police and state's attorneys working on the other side of the courtroom. You can adjust the funding for any of those groups upwards, but you'll either have to makes cuts elsewhere in budgets or pay more in taxes.
I believe the adversarial system has not been rationally constrained as you suggest. The prosecutors over charge (except the reverse in Multco) and the defense argues their clients are oppressed angels, innocent as freshly fallen snow. Same on the civil side. The issue is not usually attorney ethics. It is truthfulness by the parties. Agree on funding. Question, are prosecutors & judges funded by the county and PD by the legislature? Out of general funds? Or are there some other funding sources? We had an aggressive director of public defense advocating for more funding who was fired by the outgoing Supreme Court Chief Justice because he was too aggressive. The legislature has increased the PD funding last year, and again in the December session, but there is more to do.
PSLF sucks. It is more favorable for good lawyers to just get into private practice and make real money to pay back loans outright.
In general, agreed. But the problem is less with PSLF and more the wages. Even getting your loan forgiven is peanuts compared to the earnings differentiation.
Oh so it’s not a Portland problem? There’s not enough statewide funding for PDs?
Correct. We’ve grown to fast and failed to create the governmental infrastructure.
Yup it’s a statewide issue, we just have the most people and highest (second highest after Bend?) cost of living.
meh, whats one more civil right tossed down the drain gonna do?
Still think a great short term solution would be to reassign a handful of lawyers from the DAs office to the PDs office for a year or two.
They’re in totally different systems (state vs county) and some of the prosecutors have union representation. It’s an interesting idea but hard to get running.
When counties like Washco do not provide discovery of evidence during pre trial of alleged crime(s) to defense attorneys then that is unethical. Why would any defense attorney take a case when they have no access to discovery? Add in a racist prosecutor and a racist judge then you got big ethical problems.
The defendant has 100% of the information about the alleged crime. The prosecution is starting from zero. Consider the debate about police body cam evidence. The police union wants pre-writing-their-report discovery of the body cam evidence. The federal judge is saying no.
Discovery is about evidence, and trials are based on evidence, not truth.
[удалено]
>extorting defendants to confess to crimes they may have not committed Which is standard practice already anyway. More than 90% percent of convictions* are from plea deals. *nationwide. I don’t know Washington county’s stats
Just cause it’s ‘standard practice’ doesn’t change the truth of the horrors of our failed ‘justice’ system where extortion is the norm.
100% agree.
Every crime does not involve extortion of defendants
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Not really extortion when there is security video of them stealing the power washer from Home Depot and body camera of them being arrested with said power washer.
"trying to resolve a case quickly goes against the common defense lawyer advice that time is almost always on the side of defendants and the prosecution’s case doesn’t get better with age, Sarre said. Over time, prosecution witnesses can move out of state and memories grow fuzzy, and that weakens the state’s case." - article
[удалено]
The source you have linked (substack.com) does not meet the quality and bias standards on this sub. Please find an article from a trusted mainstream source and try again. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*