The capability for attorneys to work part time for local and state government is helping keep up legal services in rural counties as law school graduates increasingly seek employment in cities, two Arkansas prosecutors and a state official told lawmakers in Little Rock on Tuesday.
The House Judiciary Committee met to study the part-time and full-time employment of prosecutors. A provision in Act 1261 of 2015 allowed two additional rural judicial circuits to switch their prosecuting attorney jobs to a part-time salary. The act expires July 1, 2017, unless changed by a new law.
Five judicial circuits -- located in south Arkansas and rural counties in the Ozark and Ouachita mountains -- are currently served by part-time prosecuting attorneys. Of the state's 247 deputy prosecutors, 78 work part time.
While full-time prosecutors are barred from seeking private-practice employment, part-time prosecutors are not. In rural counties with only a handful of licensed lawyers, many make a part of their income working part time as a city attorney, public defender, deputy prosecutor or prosecuting attorney, said Arkansas' prosecutor coordinator, Bob McMahan.
The annual salary for part-time prosecuting attorneys, as set by the Independent Citizens Commission, is $129,200, about 15 percent less than their full-time counterparts. Full-time deputy prosecutors earn a starting salary of $55,156, compared with $37,500 for part-time deputies.
There are no criteria for determining the workload of a full-time prosecuting attorney, McMahan said, and the employment designation for each judicial circuit is determined by state law.
"It's just an issue of trying to create some incentive that says you can have some baseline of income and then practice on top of that," said Tom Tatum, the prosecuting attorney for the 15th Judicial Circuit made up of Logan, Yell, Scott and Conway counties. The 15th Judicial Circuit is one of the two newly allowed by Act 1261 to have a part-time prosecutor. The other changed was the 13th Judicial Circuit, which covers Cleveland, Calhoun, Ouachita, Union , Columbia and Dallas counties.
That prompted state Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, to question whether part-time prosecutors frequently had conflicting interests in giving private representation to clients who may later face criminal prosecution.
"I prosecute people I know every day, and the community accepts that and expects that," said Tatum, whose office in located in Danville, with a population of around 2,000. "The type of [private] work I generally do does not lend itself to conflicts in criminal work."
In some rural counties, Tatum said, citizens are at risk of losing access to nearby legal services altogether because of a lack of recent law school graduates to replace the few licensed attorneys who are close to retirement age. To compensate, circuits often have to contract with attorneys from nearby cities to work part time, Tatum said.
Part-time Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Chesshir of the 9th West Judicial Circuit, serving Little River, Sevier, Howard and Pike counties. counties, said, "I see the same problem in my district. We have four public defenders, and only one lives in the district."
The chairman of the Judicial Committee, Rep. Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, said there was "no discussion" about making all prosecuting attorneys full time and that he purpose of Tuesday's hearing was to clear up questions of several lawmakers regarding the criteria for part-time prosecutors.
Metro on 07/27/2016