Northwest Washington counties are well positioned to meet new public defense caseload standards, but officials say there are lingering concerns about funding.
San Juan, Whatcom and Skagit county officials don’t anticipate needing to hire staff this year to comply with new state standards, which cut the number of felony and misdemeanor cases public defenders can take on each year by over half.
Beginning this year, counties face a 10-year, phased countdown to comply with a cap of 47 felony cases or 120 misdemeanor cases annually. Previous limits were 150 felonies or 400 misdemeanors per year. The new standards aim to relieve the state’s strained public defense system that has struggled with lawyer shortages, immense caseloads and inadequate funding.
Although some counties in Northwest Washington haven’t faced the burgeoning caseloads as their neighbors, funding for public defense is still a concern.
In San Juan County, for example, state funding covers only 11% of public defense costs, according to Tillery Williams, the county’s deputy manager. That’s even after the state increased the amount of public defense funding it provides to local governments last year.
Erin Andrews, San Juan County communications coordinator, said the new standards are part of a broader pattern that’s forcing the county into “difficult prioritization conversations” when it comes to its budget.
“This trend of unfunded state mandates really does handicap local counties and cities,” she said. “Needing to continue to provide more and more services that the state mandates without additional funding starts to put other programs at risk…things like the WIC program and Meals on Wheels that are not mandated services for the county but provide real benefit to our residents.”
A rough forecast
Starck Follis, director of the Whatcom County Public Defender’s Office, said current staffing levels will allow the county to comply with caseload limits at least until the end of the year and likely through 2027 based on average case filings over the past few years.
Williams, with San Juan County, said a recent state shift requiring localities to make certain filings when a case is appointed to a public defender will allow real-time case tracking. Hopefully, he added, that will allow counties to monitor how close they are to the standards.
“I think misdemeanors is kind of where we’re worried; felonies, not so much,” he said. “If we were to get close to that number, then we would use outside counsel to cover so that we don’t go over.”
San Juan County is unique in that it employs only a single public defender. Juvenile public defense, cases where the public defender has a conflict of interest and, if necessary, any overflow cases are assigned to outside counsel.
Garth McCardle, the county’s recently hired public defender, is still in the process of reclaiming cases outside counsel that were assigned while the position was vacant and getting a hold of the numbers, but he believes the county will likely stay at or below the new caseload limits.
“Driving on a suspended license, there can be a lot of those filed every week, so it’ll be interesting to see,” he said.
San Juan County currently has a list of outside counsel it works with, but McCardle hopes to have an official plan in place to address any future caseload concerns.
“It would be nice to have an automatic system in place to sort of keep things flowing smoothly — because criminal law has time constraints,” he said.
Farming those cases to outside counsel, however, can add up quickly. The county saw that first-hand last year during two periods where its public defender position was vacant, with Williams saying those periods impacted the county’s budget “dramatically” since the representation is paid at an hourly rate. He estimated the added cost came out to at least $200,000.
Solutions
Unlike other states, local municipalities pay for the lion’s share of public defense costs in Washington.
That’s a problem, according to the Washington Association of Counties, which says counties “face a triple threat to their budgets: property taxes capped below inflation, skyrocketing legal liabilities and the costly responsibility of delivering the state’s constitutionally mandated public defense system, which will at least triple in cost over the next decade.”
One possible source of financial reprieve for counties is the association’s pending lawsuit for suing additional public defense funding from the state. The case will likely take a few years to play out but could result in either a trial order or settlement that allocates more money for the counties.
The issue could also be addressed through legislative action, but the Legislature opted not to take on public defense in this year’s session.
“Of course, we’re always watching how lawsuits and legislative sessions play out,” Williams said, “We have to budget according to what we know in the trends that we’ve kind of seen over the last, you know, several years — so we budget that way.”
Some counties are looking at using a new pot of public safety funding that came out of last year’s legislative session.
San Juan County plans on submitting an application and is exploring using both those funds and sales tax for public defense.
Skagit County plans on implementing the sales tax as well but will use it to hire additional sheriff deputies, a park ranger and mental health professionals among other uses, according to the county’s 2026 Budget Message.
“We are strongly advocating for the state to increase their contribution for public defense to offset the substantial need for county funding,” Skagit County Communications Manager Jennifer Rogers said.
Whatcom County, likewise, is planning on using those funds for other uses rather than public defenders, Follis said. Instead, he said the county may have to cut the budgets of other departments to fund public defense as the years go by.
“What we may see, possibly, is impact to the nonessential or the less-essential services that the county provides in order to fund the ones that they’re constitutionally mandated to provide,” he said. “So you may see, I don’t know, bathrooms and parks closed and there may be impacts that you see because that money has just been allocated elsewhere.”
— By Sydnee Chapman
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Whatcom County to deliver needs assessment for new jail,” March 24, 2026
• “Local counties brace for new public defense standards,” Sept. 3, 2025
• “Tribal court warrants to be enforceable by state authorities,” May 15, 2025
• “Local courts work to catch up on COVID-backlog delays in delivering justice,” July 23, 2021