Joint Budget Committee
In a marathon budget briefing, Colorado's public-defense agencies pressed the Joint Budget Committee for help absorbing a wave of new caseload — from an Aurora policy shift dumping ~1,200 domestic-violence prosecutions into state courts to the metastasizing CBI forensic-misconduct fallout — while university presidents warned that a $9.5M negative supplemental and looming cuts would fall hardest on rural campuses.
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Notable Quotes
“This was not something you all did. It's not something we invited. But that is the practical reality of what we're seeing now”
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Sign in to subscribeState public defender. So, Ms. Ring, do you want to start us off and then we'll. You can point us whichever way we're going? Absolutely. Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair. Isn't that what the green light means? My name is Megan Ring. I am the state public defender in Colorado. I'm a career public defender. I interned between my second and third years of law school. I will have been a public defender in Colorado for 30 years next December, which I'm next to my daughter. I think it's the thing I'm most proud of. So I've been in this position since August of 2018 as the state public defender. I actually ran the Boulder office before I took over this position. With me today is Kyle Hughes. He is our cio. To my right is one of our chief deputies, Lucy Ohanion. She's also a career public defender, and she's here to talk to you and update you about. If you recall, last year we had a decision item related to when we do this year that Aurora City Council decided they were no longer going to prosecute their domestic violence cases. And so those went to state…
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