Federal Defender's Office In Chicago Faces Deep Cuts
From the Chicago Tribune
When national budget cuts kicked in this year, the federal defender's office in Chicago reduced its staff, froze salaries and tried some creative belt-tightening by renegotiating utilities for its Loop offices and making staff lawyers pay for their own gas while visiting clients in far-flung jails.
Now, unless Congress acts quickly, further cuts because of sequestration in Washington threaten to gut an already lean operation that represents hundreds of indigent clients charged in Chicago's federal court each year, from alleged bank robbers to terrorism suspects.
"I have never seen anything like this," said Carol Brook, executive director of the Federal Defender Program in Chicago. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought this could happen."
The Chicago office is bracing for a nearly 25 percent cut in its $7.8 million budget in the fiscal year beginning in October, Brook said. That would lower the budget to about $6 million and come on top of a more than 10 percent cut in the spring that has left the office with 38 full-time employees, half of them staff lawyers.
The impact would be devastating, stalling proceedings at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse and affecting the quality of the defense that the office could provide for clients, Brook said.
Read more in our daily News Update...
From the Chicago Tribune
When national budget cuts kicked in this year, the federal defender's office in Chicago reduced its staff, froze salaries and tried some creative belt-tightening by renegotiating utilities for its Loop offices and making staff lawyers pay for their own gas while visiting clients in far-flung jails.
Now, unless Congress acts quickly, further cuts because of sequestration in Washington threaten to gut an already lean operation that represents hundreds of indigent clients charged in Chicago's federal court each year, from alleged bank robbers to terrorism suspects.
"I have never seen anything like this," said Carol Brook, executive director of the Federal Defender Program in Chicago. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought this could happen."
The Chicago office is bracing for a nearly 25 percent cut in its $7.8 million budget in the fiscal year beginning in October, Brook said. That would lower the budget to about $6 million and come on top of a more than 10 percent cut in the spring that has left the office with 38 full-time employees, half of them staff lawyers.
The impact would be devastating, stalling proceedings at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse and affecting the quality of the defense that the office could provide for clients, Brook said.
Read more in our daily News Update...