County finds creative multidepartment fix to close $1.1 million public defender budget gap

Santa Cruz County staff have found a solution to fill a $1.1 million funding gap for the public defender’s office, getting approval from supervisors at the county’s third budget hearing on Wednesday. 

Chief Public Defender Heather Rogers previously proposed creating an in-house alternate public defender’s office and ending a longstanding contract with a local law firm, Page & Dudley, as a way to avoid layoffs and continue connecting clients to social services through the department’s in-house social workers. But the board of supervisors rejected the proposal on June 10 and directed staff to find another solution.

The new plan involved officials working across multiple departments to find ways to close the shortfall without tapping already strained reserves or making deeper cuts to public defender services.

Earlier this year, county staff projected a $23.2 million deficit for the 2026-27 fiscal year, and a long-term structural deficit that could exceed $67 million by 2028-29 in the absence of mitigating actions. The county implemented travel and hiring restrictions and asked that departments look for ways to balance their respective budgets.

County Executive Officer Nicole Coburn has previously said the county will need to pull nearly $43 million in combined one-time funding from its general fund reserves and departmental trust funds to help avoid employee layoffs and keep safety-net services that are provided by the county, such as health and social services. 

Under the latest proposal to fill the $1.1 million gap, the public defender’s office will receive $238,998 from the probation department and $125,000 from the Health Services Agency. It will also receive a projected $550,801 in Medi-Cal administrative activities revenue for the 2026-27 fiscal year, according to a county staff report. 

The five-member board of supervisors voted 4-1 Wednesday to approve Rogers’ latest budget proposal, with Supervisor Monica Martinez voting against it.

The Medi-Cal administrative funds are federal reimbursements for “certain activities related to linking people up with health services,” which includes treatment related to behavioral health and substance abuse, said Rogers. 

Ahead of Wednesday’s session, Rogers told Lookout that her department has been working on increasing this revenue source for quite some time since the public defender’s office focuses on holistic defense, which tailors legal representation to a client’s needs with the help of social workers. 

“So, if we cut a social worker from the budget, for example, we’re cutting somebody who’s producing more revenue,” she said. 

Accounting for the rest of the shortfall was a challenge, and one she wasn’t sure she’d be able to meet, said Rogers.

“I felt like I had done everything I could to fill this gap, and thought about everything in the most creative possible way with our county team,” she said. 

People from different county departments — specifically from the probation office and health services — reached out to Rogers, and told her they’d go through their own budgets to see if they could shift any of their funding to the public defender’s office. 

Coburn told Lookout that the two departments had identified either current or anticipated vacancies, which allows them to reduce some of that funding for staff and move it to the public defender’s budget. She added that the slight shift in funding would not negatively impact the departments’ finances. 

County staff also had discussions with Page & Dudley to see if the firm would be willing to reduce its contract amount, but the firm was not open to lowering its cost, said Coburn. 

Coburn said she’s relieved that the county won’t be forced to dip into its reserves that are “already at the minimum.” She also notes that the idea of an in-house alternate public defender’s office is not completely off the table, and that transition will happen sometime in the future. 

Rogers called the revised budget a “fair solution” ahead of Wednesday’s vote. 

“We took the direction of the board, we tried to understand their concerns, we took the direction of the community, we thought very carefully about the impact this would have on the staff at Page & Dudley,” Rogers said. “I hope that the supervisors agree.” 

In addition to discussing the public defender’s budget, the board of supervisors on Wednesday also weighed a staff proposal to cut a $170,000 contract with Arts Council Santa Cruz County and reduce funding for the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History to patch a hole in the parks department budget. Following a nearly two-hour discussion and pushback from the local arts community, the board delayed approval of the parks budget until its June 30 meeting.

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