April 6, 2010
STATE BAR PRESIDENT MICHAEL E. GETNICK COMMENTS ON
REPORT RECENTLY ISSUED BY STATE COMPTROLLER DINAPOLI
New York State Bar Association President Michael E. Getnick (Getnick
Livingston Atkinson & Priore, LLP of Utica and of counsel to Getnick
& Getnick of New York City) today issued the following statement in
response to State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s recently
released fiscal report, entitled “New York’s Deficit
Shuffle.”
“Comptroller DiNapoli’s report – highlighted in
various news media stories today – that nearly $6.6
million from the Indigent Legal Services Fund has been
‘swept’ into the state’s General Fund raises serious
concerns about the ability of New York State to meet the
constitutionally protected right to counsel in criminal matters.
“Diverting this money into the General Fund, instead of using
it to pay for the growing need for legal defense services to the
indigent – for which it was created – seriously jeopardizes
the right to effective counsel that our Constitution demands. The
state’s budget should not be balanced on the backs of the indigent
nor should it be balanced at the expense of providing equal access to
the justice system for all New Yorkers.”
The statute governing attorney registration, Judiciary Law section
468-a, specifies that $50 of the $350 biennial fee "shall be allocated
to and deposited in a fund established by section 98-b of the state
finance law," which is the statute establishing the Indigent Legal
Defense Fund. In 2003, the State Bar’s House of Delegates, the
official policy-making body of the New York State Bar Association,
endorsed the establishment of an Indigent Legal Services Fund with the
condition that $50 of the biennial attorney registration fee be
dedicated in its entirety as a
source of permanent funding for this Fund.
In April 2004, the House of Delegates approved of a
resolution sponsored by the State Bar’s Special Committee to
Ensure the Quality of Mandated Representation specifically requiring
that funds from the Indigent Legal Services Fund be dedicated to assist
counties in providing legal representation for persons financially
unable to afford counsel and for no other purposes.
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Founded in 1876, the 77,000-member New York State Bar Association is
the official statewide organization of lawyers in New York and the
largest voluntary state bar association in the nation. The State
Bar’s programs and activities have continuously served the public
and improved the justice system for more than 130 years.
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