Public-defender director OK’d to quit in email vote

Warning that the “press have been calling” and “must smell something on the horizon,” the chairman of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission rushed members to vote by email Tuesday to accept the resignation of the agency’s longtime director.

Didi Sallings, who helped create the agency that provides legal aid to poor Arkansas defendants, stepped down Tuesday after 20 years with the Public Defender Commission, commission Chairman Jerry Larkowski announced. The resignation is “effective immediately,” he said.

But the method the commission used to accept her resignation raises questions.

In a news release, Larkowski said Sallings’ job was “grueling” and that “after much thought, counsel and encouragement, Didi, on her own, has asked the commissioners to allow her to stand down as executive director and find a way that she can continue to serve this commission and our purposes. As the chair, I insisted that we honor that request, and I have spent the past few weeks trying to find a way to make that happen.”

The seven-member commission voted unanimously by email Tuesday to accept Sallings’ resignation, Larkowski said by phone Tuesday.

The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requires votes to be cast in public.

Larkowski said that after weeks of executive-session meetings, the commission entered into a public session in June and agreed at that time to take a vote by email.

“Had we taken a vote at the last meeting, nothing different would have happened,” Larkowski said. “There’s nothing to hide.”

He couldn’t point to a part of law or the advice of an attorney who said voting via email adheres to the Freedom of Information Act.

Arkansas Code Annotated 25-19-106 states that a motion considered or approved in an executive session is not legal unless the vote is made in public.

The emails sent Tuesday reflect a unanimous vote.

The first email from Larkowski to the other commissioners in which he asks for a vote was sent eight minutes after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette began asking questions Tuesday. “The press have been calling,” it states. “They must smell something is on the horizon. I encourage us to act in a manner that is careful but also answers the questions I am sure they are about to ask.”

None of the commissioners asks whether the law allows a vote by email.

Sallings was not part of the email conversation.

Sallings voluntarily stepped down, Larkowski said.

“Didi has worked her rear end off for 20 years for this commission,” Larkowski said.

She is the only executive director the commission has had since it was created in 1993. Her salary in fiscal 2014 is $106,820. Sallings was previously a public defender in Pulaski County.

According to a written statement from Larkowski, the job has taken a toll on Sallings.

“A number of folks who have been very close to Didi over the years have recently become concerned about Didi the person much more than Didi the executive director,” it states.

She will stay on at the commission as an appellate attorney. Larkowski did not know what her new salary will be, saying the position will be classified as a Public Defender III, for which the annual salary is $80,000 to $90,000.

Sallings did not return calls to her cellphone Tuesday. Commission attorney Gregg Parrish will serve as interim director, Larkowski said.

The commission was created in 1993, in part because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that poor criminal defendants are at an unconstitutionally unfair disadvantage when facing better funded state prosecutors at trial, particularly in death-penalty cases, unless there is adequate funding for public defenders.

Budget requests from the agency state that approximately 90 percent of people prosecuted by the state are represented by a public defender or appointed counsel.

The governor appoints the seven members of the Public Defender Commission, which employs more than 300 people statewide whose job is to ensure that indigent Arkansans have adequate legal representation. With a high workload, the commission has asked the Legislature for additional staff or funding year after year.

During the 2013 legislative session, lawmakers rejected the addition of employees to the Public Defender Commission to help more than 59 people who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for murders they committed as youths. The extra employees were needed because of a June 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down as unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual punishment” state laws that mandate life sentences without the possibility of parole for youths who commit murder.

At the time, Sallings said that the commission would have to pay private lawyers to do the work if the request wasn’t granted.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/24/2013

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