Pay raises for Rhode Island’s public defense attorneys were supposed to take effect eight months ago but remain on hold while the state updates its payroll system.
That’s according to Deputy Public Defender Matthew Toro, who spoke before the House Finance Subcommittee on Public Safety on March 20 as part of the General Assembly’s annual hearings meant to shape the state’s fiscal year 2026 budget.
“We have been delayed, delayed, and delayed,” Toro told the subcommittee.
The General Assembly allocated $750,000 from the state’s general revenue in the state’s most recent budget fund to boost attorney salaries as a way to retain the 58 attorneys working in the understaffed Rhode Island Office of Public Defender and hopefully attract more staff.
The promised wage increase has kept attorneys from leaving, but Toro said they still have not been able to up their lawyers’ average pay above $94,000. He blamed a “herculean task” by the Rhode Island Department of Administration to update the state’s HR and finance system to a cloud-based one.
Work on the system began in January 2023 and is expected to be complete by the end of 2025, department spokesperson Karen Greco said in an email Monday.
Toro told Rhode Island Current that the IT hurdles have been resolved and the raises are expected to finally be issued in the coming weeks.
What remains unresolved: the large caseload public defenders have to juggle.
A 2017 report by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers found that Rhode Island’s Public Defender Office would require 136 full-time attorneys in order to “provide reasonably effective assistance.”
In his budget memo submitted to Gov. Dan McKee last October, Public Defender Collin Geiselman noted that felony attorneys routinely carry caseloads well above the national standard.
Geiselman’s memo notes an average of roughly 200 felony cases per attorney in 2024. The national standard set by the American Bar Association is 150 cases. Rhode Island’s public defenders’ attorneys handled an average of roughly 700 misdemeanor cases in 2024, while the national standard is 400.
But the state is making some progress. Those averages are the lowest Rhode Island’s public defenders have dealt with in the last five years, according to the memo. In 2019, attorneys handled an average of roughly 1,300 felony cases and almost 250 misdemeanor cases.
“The agency has labored for many years under caseloads so large they jeopardize quality representation across the board, no matter how talented and dedicated our attorneys are,” Geiselman wrote.
If the office could hire just two more attorneys to handle misdemeanor cases, Toro told the subcommittee he believes each of the existing attorneys would see their caseload reduced by 100.
But such a request did not make it into McKee’s proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. McKee spokesperson Andrea Palagi on Monday cited the state’s looming $223 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2026 as the governor’s reason for not wanting to fill the additional positions.
“The administration’s primary focus during this budget process was taking steps to right-size government,” Palagi said in an emailed statement, adding that the state has added eight positions to the public defender’s office since 2021.
That leaves any budget updates to the General Assembly, which is what brought Toro before the House Finance subcommittee on March 20.
“We are fully aware of the financial picture for 2026,” Toro told the subcommittee. “Notwithstanding that, we are a constitutionally mandated service — the state has to provide our services.”
Toro called the office’s request conservative.
“We didn’t come in and ask for scores and scores of lawyers,” he said. “We know the precious resources of the state are that: precious.”
The challenges facing the overworked and underpaid public defender’s office did not come as a shock to ACLU of Rhode Island Executive Director Steven Brown.
“The workloads that these attorneys have is atrocious, and it’s something that should be of concern to anyone who cares about a fair criminal justice system,” Brown said in an interview. “They perform a critical public service.”
Toro also remains hopeful that the General Assembly will consider budgeting for the additional hires, which in turn will help the public defender’s office meet its mission of providing legal counsel to those who can’t afford private attorneys.
“What better way to test those fairness values than with the poor, who lack economic resources and are charged with unpopular crimes,” Toro told the subcommittee. “If the system’s fair to them, it will be fair to everybody.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
