Governor Mitt Romney
Office of the Governor, Room 320
Boston, MA 02133

Dear Governor Romney:

I did catch your recent diatribe about attorneys who provide Constitutionally mandated services on behalf of indigents.

Further exchanges in the media could take place and consume much more time but instead the better course would be to work hard to achieve an appropriate resolution. That course would show true leadership and concern for both the public safety and Constitutional rights.

I suggest that you are simply wrong when you claim that the attorneys have caused this crisis. In fact the attorneys who have continued to provide these services, in spite of stagnant compensation rates, have been warning of an approaching crisis for years. For years the Committee for Public Counsel Services has shown the Legislature and the Governor's office their statistics which reveal that while cases have exponentially increased the numbers of financially available counsel have dramatically declined.

Many of us who had continued to perform these essential services have echoed those warnings because we saw firsthand the continual loss of our most experienced brothers due to financial constraints. I know that you are aware that Bristol County attorneys filed suit in the Superior Court to convey the message of this approaching crisis. I know that you are aware that hundreds of attorneys appeared at a hearing at the Statehouse on February 3, 2004. I know this because I personally delivered our written submissions to your office that day. I know that you are aware of the number of articles that have appeared in the state-wide press for months warning of this coming crisis and much more.

Before the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court rendered its unanimous opinion in Lavallee there was warning, it merely went unheeded.

Let us be accurate it is the inaction of the Legislature and the Governor's office which has caused this crisis.

And yet you would cast blame on those attorneys who have for years kept this creaking system afloat. You would suggest that the attorneys who have continued to serve the Constitution should be banned for life. What about all other attorneys in Massachusetts who long ago deigned these paltry rates beneath them? Shall they too be forever precluded from providing these required services?

Will this list of excluded attorneys include those that have made themselves available for state service only when the rates of compensation have been $250 per hour?

And how does this solve the problem of insufficient counsel? There aren't enough as it is and yet you want to cut those numbers further.

You tell us that this should only be part-time, but because fewer attorneys have been available, many of us in the past have picked up the slack. The result is that, at times our caseload has been far more than only part time. Which way do you want it? Should I not take new cases so that I am only doing this Constitutionally required work as 'gravy'?

I can only agree with one message you conveyed, and that is that these services are in fact essential. Those of us who provide these services perform a most conservative function, preserving our Constitution. But like all essential functions these services have a cost.

It is time to work diligently, to form a consensus and use real facts to preserve our most revered Constitutional principles here in Massachusetts.

I hope that the Governor and Legislature are willing to do so.

Paul J. Machado
President,
Bristol County Bar Advocates