The House of Delegates yesterday killed amendments from Gov. Tim Kaine that would have increased the pay of court-appointed lawyers in juvenile court.
Kaine had sought to shoehorn the increase through changes to House Bill 2361, which will permit a judge to waive the fee limits for court-appointed counsel in certain cases. While killing that group of amendments by a 91-6 vote, the House left intact the broader portions of the bill. For the record, all of Kaine’s changes passed the Senate unanimously.
Both Houses approved Kaine’s amendment to the bill that requires court officials to track the number of court appointments, including offenses charged, and the number of fee cap waivers, including dollars paid. The court must report those statistics quarterly to the governor and to the legislature.
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While the proposed amendments to the fee caps for juvenile defenders were not approved, the amendments that the General Assembly accepted included changes to the fee cap waiver language that were intended to make waivers of the caps available to attorneys representing juveniles or adults. That is why they changed the language in original line 52 to read "in this section" instead of "in subdivision 2" and why they added that the request for a waiver approval was to be submitted to either the chief judge of the circuit court or the district court for approval.
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