Maine public defense commission wants to improve confidentiality in jail communications
The main courtroom of the old Kennebec County Courthouse, now part of the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta. (Jim Neuger/ Maine Morning Star)
The Maine Commission on Public Defense Services is asking the Legislature to consider a proposal to improve confidentiality between attorneys and incarcerated people communicating in jails.
LD 1825, would prohibit a jail or third-party contractor who provides communication services from intercepting communication between a person who is incarcerated and an attorney or an employee of a law office. It would also bar them from charging a fee for those communications.
Current law requires the commission to send a list of names and contact information for attorneys who provide legal services to incarcerated people to all sheriff's offices on a weekly basis. The legislation would also require each jail to send electronic communications to each attorney on that list certifying that communications will not be intercepted or come with a fee.
While the Department of Corrections already provides a certain amount of free phone calls to people being held in jails, officials opposed this bill, saying that allowing more would be cost prohibitive. Deputy Commissioner Anthony Cantillo also raised concerns about the electronic communication stipulation and whether jails would be able to keep track of who is an employee at a law office since only attorneys are included on that weekly list.
Maine is in the midst of what some have described a 'constitutional crisis' regarding the state's ability to provide timely counsel to defendants who can't afford an attorney. The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine has argued since 2022 that the state is in violation of the Sixth Amendment, which declares the right to a speedy and public trial and legal counsel.
Earlier this year, the Kennebec County Superior Court agreed to start releasing defendants who have been waiting for counsel from incarceration if the state fails to provide representation. In response, the commission put forth a proposal with short- and long-term solutions to address the issue.
LD 1825 was one of four bills the commission brought to the Legislature's Judiciary Committee born out of an annual report that was submitted to the committee earlier this year. Because of this, they were not sponsored by individual legislators as usual.
These proposals come after the Legislature passed a bill last month to bolster the state's strained public defense system by creating new staff positions and increasing funding for private counsel representing defendants who can't afford their own attorneys. It subsequently became law without Gov. Janet Mills endorsing it with her signature.
The commission also saw push back from the judicial branch on another proposal, LD 1796.
That bill seeks to clarify that the courts — and not the commission — are responsible for providing and paying for counsel to a juvenile who files a petition for emancipation and those who are entitled to publicly funded counsel in probate cases. It similarly seeks to clarify that courts are responsible for providing the services of a guardian ad litem appointed at public expense.
Julie Finn, a representative for the judicial branch, said the proposed changes would transfer responsibilities onto the courts that are already underresourced. If the judicial branch is asked to take on those responsibilities and payments, Finn said additional dollars would need to follow. She gave a rough cost estimate of $350,000 to $400,000.
Carney asked Finn and the public defense commission's Executive Director Jim Billings to ponder creative solutions to address the disagreement over who should have that responsibility because she thinks 'the money, ultimately, will be a wash.'
Billings said he doesn't have strong feelings on whether this falls on the commission or the judicial branch, but he wants to avoid future scenarios where the commission is paying for attorneys on both sides of a guardianship case.
Another bill sought to clarify when a criminal defendant is entitled to counsel at state expense. Billings said the commission is asking the committee to consider LD 1802 because of previous situations that felt incongruent with due process and fairness.
Currently, prosecutors indicate if they will be seeking jail time in cases where that would be possible. If they indicate they won't be seeking jail time, that person does not have a right to indigent defense services.
However, Billings said there are scenarios where a defendant has already spent a night in jail but the prosecutor isn't planning to pursue further jail time, so they aren't deemed eligible. LD 1802 would change the policy so that person would be entitled to counsel.
Billings said other states actually use a simpler system that entitles a person to counsel if the crime they are charged with authorizes jail as a sentence, rather than relying on the intentions of the prosecutor. When asked why the commission isn't trying to adopt that approach, Billings said he's interested in using incremental change and compromise to further justice in the state.
'We are moving in baby steps over at PDS,' he told the committee.
The final bill brought by the commission seeks technical amendments to the definitions of 'employed counsel' and 'public defender.' LD 1801 would also make training materials used by the commission confidential in response to concerns that some presenters have raised that their materials could be subject to Freedom of Access Act laws.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CBS News
32 minutes ago
- CBS News
Minnesota Legislature approves increased electric vehicle fee to shore up funding for roads and bridges
Electric vehicle owners aren't paying at the gas pump, but they'll soon see higher fees in Minnesota, thanks to a new law doubling the surcharge for those cars to shore up funding for roads and bridges. The current $75 annual fee will double to at least $150. How much someone pays could be steeper if they have a more expensive, newer vehicle, similar to how the state calculates registration fees, which EV owners must still pay. For example, a new EV with a $50,000 retail price would mean a $250 fee based on that calculation, which is more than three times the current rate. The provision was part of a bipartisan transportation package that the divided Legislature approved during Monday's special session and the objective was to find a sustainable path forward for transportation at a time when gas tax revenue — a large source of that support — is declining, according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation. More electric vehicles on the road, which is the state's goal, will mean even fewer dollars flowing into that account in the future. "There's kind of an irony where we want more fuel-efficient vehicles, but that decreases the amount of money that's going into our roads and bridges to maintain them," said Rep. Jon Koznick, R-Lakeville, the Republican co-chair of the House Transportation Committee. "We have about a billion dollars a year funding gap just to maintain our roads and bridges. And so that's why electric vehicles were getting a really good deal before — they're still going to get a pretty good deal." Koznick explained he would have preferred to make the fee flat across the board and not use the formula that would increase the costs for newer vehicles, which he called "convoluted." But it was part of a compromise with Democrats in a divided Capitol, where bipartisan support was required to advance any legislation. EV owners should be paying higher fees because those cars are heavier and do more damage to the roads, he said. The new surcharge takes effect for car registrations after Jan. 1. There is also a new five-cent fee per kilowatt hour of electricity at public charging stations set to take effect in July 2027, at which point the annual surcharge minimum would drop from $150 to $100. Meanwhile, EV advocates are worried increased fees will make consumers pump the brakes on buying one when it's better for the environment. "We do have concerns that we could be discouraging adoption at this point, at a time when the state has said it really wants to support electrification and get more EVs on the roads," said Carolyn Berninger with Drive Electric Minnesota Coalition in a March interview. Only 1% of cars in Minnesota are electric today, Berninger said, but sales are increasing. Seven percent of cars purchased in 2023 were electric, according to the Minnesota Department of Commerce. The state's goal is that 20% of all cars are electric by 2030. "We feel like now is not the time to hike up EV fees because the market is still emerging," Berninger said. Pat O'Brien of St. Paul told WCCO Wednesday that he loves his electric vehicle that he's had for the last few years. He estimates he has saved thousands in that time by not having to pay for gas. He said he isn't quite sure how he feels about the changes. "I understand the reasoning behind why there should be a surcharge, but I'm not sure about this extra—this is news to me that there's yet two more charges," he said.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump aides want Texas to redraw its congressional maps to boost the GOP. What would that mean?
This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas' free newsletters here. Republicans representing Texas in Congress are considering this week whether to push their state Legislature to take the unusual step of redrawing district lines to shore up the GOP's advantage in the U.S. House. But the contours of the plan, including whether Gov. Greg Abbott would call a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps, remain largely uncertain. The idea is being driven by President Donald Trump's political advisers, who want to draw up new maps that would give Republicans a better chance to flip seats currently held by Democrats, according to two GOP congressional aides familiar with the matter. That proposal, which would involve shifting GOP voters from safely red districts into neighboring blue ones, is aimed at safeguarding Republicans' thin majority in Congress, where they control the lower chamber, 220-212. The redistricting proposal, and the Trump team's role in pushing it, was first reported by The New York Times Monday. Without a Republican majority in Congress, Trump's legislative agenda would likely stall, and the president could face investigations from newly empowered Democratic committee chairs intent on scrutinizing the White House. Here's what we know about the plan so far: On Capitol Hill, members of the Texas GOP delegation huddled Monday night to discuss the prospect of reshaping their districts. Most of the 25-member group expressed reluctance about the idea, citing concerns about jeopardizing their districts in next year's midterms if the new maps overextended the GOP's advantage, according to the two GOP aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, was skeptical of the idea. 'We just recently worked on the new maps,' Arrington told The Texas Tribune. To reopen the process, he said, 'there'd have to be a significant benefit to our state.' The delegation has yet to be presented with mockups of new maps, two aides said. Each state's political maps must be redrawn once a decade, after each round of the U.S. census, to account for population growth and ensure every congressional and legislative district has roughly the same number of people. Texas lawmakers last overhauled their district lines in 2021. There's no federal law that prohibits states from redrawing district maps midcycle, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's civil rights division. Laws around the timing to redraw congressional and state district maps vary by state. In Texas, the state constitution doesn't specify timing, so the redrawing of maps is left to the discretion of the governor and the Legislature. Lawmakers gaveled out of their 140-day regular session last week, meaning they would need to be called back for a special session to change the state's political maps. Abbott has the sole authority to order overtime sessions and decide what lawmakers are allowed to consider. A trial is underway in El Paso in a long-running challenge to the state legislative and congressional district maps Texas drew after the 2020 U.S. Census. If Texas redraws its congressional maps, state officials would then ask the court to toss the claims challenging those districts 'that no longer exist,' Levitt said. The portion of the case over the state legislative district maps would continue. If the judge agrees, then both parties would have to file new legal claims for the updated maps. It isn't clear how much maps could change, but voters could find themselves in new districts, and Levitt said redrawing the lines in the middle of the redistricting cycle is a bad idea. 'If the people of Texas think that their representatives have done a bad job, then when the [district] lines change, they're not voting on those representatives anymore,' Levitt said. 'New people are voting on those representatives.' The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Democrats' national arm for contesting state GOP mapmaking, said the proposal to expand Republicans' stronghold in Texas was 'yet another example of Trump trying to suppress votes in order to hold onto power.' 'Texas's congressional map is already being sued for violating the Voting Rights Act because it diminishes the voting power of the state's fast-growing Latino population,' John Bisognano, president of the NDRC said. 'To draw an even more extreme gerrymander would only assure that the barrage of legal challenges against Texas will continue.' When Republicans in charge of the Legislature redrew the district lines after the 2020 census, they focused on reinforcing their political support in districts already controlled by the GOP. This redistricting proposal would likely take a different approach. As things stand, Republicans hold 25 of the state's 38 congressional seats. Democrats hold 12 seats and are expected to regain control of Texas' one vacant seat in a special election this fall. Most of Texas' GOP-controlled districts lean heavily Republican: In last year's election, 24 of those 25 seats were carried by a Republican victor who received at least 60% of the vote or ran unopposed. The exception was U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who captured 57% of the vote and won by a comfortable 14-point margin. With little competition to speak of, The Times reported, Trump's political advisers believe at least some of those districts could bear the loss of GOP voters who would be reshuffled into neighboring, Democratic-held districts — giving Republican hopefuls a better chance to flip those seats from blue to red. The party in control of the White House frequently loses seats during midterm cycles, and Trump's team is likely looking to offset potential GOP losses in other states and improve the odds of holding on to a narrow House majority. Incumbent Republicans, though, don't love the idea of sacrificing a comfortable race in a safe district for the possibility of picking up a few seats, according to GOP aides. In 2003, after Texas Republicans initially left it up to the courts to draw new lines following the 2000 census, then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Sugar Land Republican, embarked instead on a bold course of action to consolidate GOP power in the state. He, along with his Republican allies, redrew the lines as the opening salvo to a multistate redistricting plan aimed at accumulating power for his party in states across the country. Enraged by the power play, Democrats fled the state, depriving the Texas House of the quorum it needed to function. The rebels eventually relented under threat of arrest, a rare power in the Texas Constitution used to compel absent members back to return to Austin when the Legislature is in session. The lines were then redrawn, cementing the GOP majority the delegation has enjoyed in Washington for the past two decades. However, what's at play this time is different than in the early 2000s, when Republicans had a newfound majority in the Legislature and had a number of vulnerable Democratic incumbents they could pick off. Now, Republicans have been entrenched in the majority for decades and will have to answer the question of whether there's really more to gain, said Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice's Washington office. 'That's the tradeoff. You can do that too much so that you actually make them so competitive that the other side wins,' Crayton said. 'That's always a danger.' Texas Republicans are planning to reconvene Thursday to continue discussing the plan, according to Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, who said they will attend the meeting. Members of Trump's political team are also expected to attend, according to Hunt and two GOP congressional aides familiar with the matter. Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She's based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@ Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.


Boston Globe
5 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Big Beautiful Bill would ban regulating AI
How did they give away the future of American workers to tech executives? Buried in President Trump's Advertisement Iin Massachusetts, the Republicans' ban would block the State House from considering legislation that would safeguard our fundamental rights. Labor unions, led by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, and community members have come together to urge the Legislature to pass an act fostering artificial intelligence responsibility, known as the FAIR Act. Advertisement The bill would establish needed guardrails around the use of AI and similar technologies by employers and in the workplace. It would restrict the use of AI-driven worker surveillance tools, many of which are already being used, and prevent employers from relying solely on automatic decision-making systems in hiring, firing, or promotion. With workers increasingly being asked to incorporate AI into their everyday work, this legislation would also establish strong anti-retaliation protections and worker autonomy provisions. If AI tools are to be used for good, we need meaningful human oversight and worker input at every step of their implementation. Preventing states like Massachusetts from considering policy like the FAIR Act would halt community-based momentum and leave workers and their families exposed to the unchecked harms of AI. This kind of giveaway for tech billionaires is the exact opposite of what Americans want from Congress. are wary of how US companies develop and use AI. But congressional Republicans are not listening to workers. Instead, they follow Elon Musk and the other Big Tech executives who want to make Washington, D.C. the next Silicon Valley and hope you won't notice the single section in Trump's bill that lines their pockets and strips you of democracy until 2035. Advertisement Trump urged House Republicans to pass the bill with the AI ban in it. But there is one more hurdle to the president's agenda ahead — the Senate. Senators must now decide whether they will stand with the interests of workers and everyday people or the interests of Big Tech billionaires. The line between tech innovation and tech domination will be drawn not in Washington, but in the workplaces, schools, and sectors where AI transforms our lives, for good and bad. It is the job of state and local representatives to adapt to these changes and pass regulations that make sense for their communities — if only Republicans don't stifle democracy first.