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On Monday, State Auditor Susan Montee and her office announced their plans to perform an audit of the state’s Public Defender Commission. KSMU’s Justin Lux has the story.
The audit will be looking at all the federal dollars that come into Missouri, including those from the stimulus package. While the audit will most likely not take place until the end of this year, Montee’s office wanted to let the public know that the review will be taking place.
The public defender system has long faced issues concerning their overload of cases. The Springfield Public Defenders office, which closed in July due to a high workload, had lawyers averaging from 120 to 130 open cases at one time.
Many Missouri prosecutors feel the defenders are overstating the workload and are using it as an excuse. Allison Bruns, the Director of Communications in the State Auditors Office, says that the closing of two offices due to caseloads did not play into the office’s decision to perform an audit.
“Our audits are strictly looking at financial and performance indicators. We don’t take policy positions on things, you know, just across the board on any audits that we do,” Bruns says.
Bruns says the auditor does not have any sort of preconceived notions as to what she might find. An audit has not been performed on the Public Defender Commission since 2004.
For KSMU News, I’m Justin Lux.
