For over forty years King County met it’s obligation to provide indigent criminal defendants with counsel by contracting with four independent non-profit agencies. In 2012 – 13, for reasons not relevant here, King County conscripted all of the agencies and their employees into a new King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) converting all 400 former private non-profit employees into county employees. The county replaced the four independent agencies with four similarly named divisions of DPD. Before it was absorbed by the county, I had been employed by “The Defender Association.” As of 2013 I was employed by “The Defender Association Division (TDAD)” of DPD. The other agencies became “Associated Counsel for the Accused Division,” (ACAD), “Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons Division,” (SCRAPD), and “Northwest Defenders Association Division,” (NDAD).
Once we became county employees our salaries were supposed to be brought into parity with much higher paid corresponding positions in the prosecutors’ office. In 2016 DPD decided to create thirty-five special “senior attorney” positions. Senior attorneys would receive significant pay raises. There were approximately 160 non-management attorneys employed by DPD so the senior promotions would benefit only twenty percent of DPD’s hod carrying lawyers.
An elaborate selection process was established requiring applications, review teams, interviews with co-workers and supervisors, interviews with applicants, and allowance of “confidential” comments from any DPD employee with or without an ax to grind. The process was initially intended, at least by our union, to avoid cronyism which most attorneys (and staff) believed had long infected promotions at all the non-profit agencies. Managing attorneys of the four divisions weren’t having it. They lobbied the administration to protect a treasured perk of their positions, patronage. The managers succeeded in maintaining the ability to promote their favorites in two ways, 1) by inserting a clause in the selection protocol allowing applicants’ original scores scores, awarded after the review teams’ exhaustive investigations, to be changed at the behest of managing attorneys, and 2) by allowing managers to veto any applicant without explanation.
Sixty-nine attorneys applied for the thirty-five senior positions. I was one of the thirty-four rejected applicants. Had the process been fair, even if the promotions were awarded by lot, the unselected would have been disappointed but accepting. After all, we were all criminal defense attorneys who had experience in doing our best but losing cases and moving on. However, this selection process was not fair, and people were hurt, very hurt.
Observations 