AURORA | Lawmakers’ search for a cheaper alternative to Aurora’s in-house public defender office has come to an end, after the city officially closed its request for proposals Friday, having received no offers.
Council conservatives voted in October to launch the RFP, questioning whether private attorneys could handle the caseload of the Aurora Public Defender’s Office for less money. The city budgeted about $2.58 million for the office in 2024.
Dustin Zvonek, who sponsored the resolution that initiated the RFP, said Monday that he considered the outcome to be the end of the investigation into whether the city could save money by privatizing the office.
“I said from the beginning that I wanted to explore this because I believed that there was a way for us to provide the same level of service at a lower cost,” Zvonek said. “Obviously, one side said ‘no,’ and others were saying ‘yes.’ I just wanted to find out what the real answer was. We’ll never know for sure.”
In response to a request made under the Colorado Open Records Act for bids received in response to the RFP, a city staffer said Monday morning that Aurora had not gotten any bids by the time the deadline passed Friday.
City spokesman Ryan Luby also said staffers had not received any direction from the council to continue looking into replacing the public defender office since the RFP closed.
Council progressives, legal watchdog groups, other Colorado defense attorneys and the city’s chief public defender, Elizabeth Cadiz, had slammed the RFP, arguing that the document published by the city inviting bids underrepresented the work done by the office.
On Monday, Cadiz stood by her previous assertion that the RFP was “poorly-written” but said she was hopeful that the end of the bidding process will also mean the end of the council looking to cut spending on public defense.
“I will take this as a sign of progress toward getting back to doing the real work that we do, without fear of losing our jobs,” she said.
Despite the implicit threat to public defenders of their jobs being eliminated if the council accepted a bid, Cadiz said her office has experienced no turnover among its attorneys since the start of the RFP process.
“My attorneys are really good lawyers, and I think that could be appealing to potential jobs elsewhere, but somehow we’ve stuck together,” she said, mentioning how her office’s attorneys were recognized in January with the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar’s Advancing Justice Award.
Janene McCabe, president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, said the office stands out in Colorado’s legal community for its high rate of success defending clients — about 70% of cases that the office took to trial resulted in acquittals at the time of a 2021 independent report — as well as its ongoing advocacy for due process in Aurora’s Municipal Court.
In 2022, the Aurora Public Defender’s Office uncovered a yearslong failure by the city prosecutors to notify defense attorneys when police officers with demonstrated credibility issues were involved in criminal cases, impacting hundreds of criminal cases.
“If you don’t have an agency that’s really able to put the checks and balances in place on the prosecution, then, essentially, those violations go unheeded,” McCabe said.
“It’s an agency that is really advocating on behalf of the community members. … They continue to show up, because they’re committed to doing the work that this community really deserves.”
Cadiz previously suggested former chief public defender Doug Wilson’s public opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing laws as well as their office’s friction with city prosecutors had prompted conservatives to bring the RFP as an act of retaliation. Zvonek has said the characterization of the RFP as being about anything but saving taxpayer money is false.
Cadiz also said she remains concerned about the council’s actions undermining the independence of the office, which is officially governed by a seven-person commission that is chosen by the council but is empowered under city code to “appoint and discharge, at its discretion, the municipal public defender and his or her assistants.”
The RFP process moved forward over the objections of the commission, which described the Aurora Public Defender’s Office as “a model for other large municipal public defender’s offices around the country” in a December letter to the council.
“I’m pleased that there are no bids and that we had this opportunity to explore the questions that the City Council had as to the cost of providing public defense,” commission Chairperson Tom Tobiassen said Monday, adding that he shares Cadiz’s concerns about the council’s respect for the office’s independence.
Tobiassen said he would like to meet with council members and City Manager Jason Batchelor to explain why independent public defense is important and better understand the council’s concerns with the cost of public defense.
“We need to have a sustainable model that goes into the future of providing public defense, so staff, the council and the rest of the court system are confident that we’re doing a good job, and it’s cost effective and worth the taxpayers money,” he said.
Cadiz said a study of the workload of entities within the municipal justice system, which she hopes will support her office’s previous requests for additional staffers, is expected to be completed by the end of April.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from Aurora City Council member Dustin Zvonek.
The city council members who put this forward are clearly ignorant of what private firms make if they think public defenders are more expensive. It makes me question the integrity of the RFP. Public defenders are usually overworked and underpaid; sometimes only getting the bare minimum of information on a client before the first time they have to defend them in court. There’s a pretty big reason why private firms took a pass.
Congratulations to our public defenders on the Advancing Justice Award! Thank you for your hard work and for sticking together through this insulting process.
Sarcasm alert: Perhaps we should issue an RFP for the Aurora City Council. Those who bring in the least outside money and are most interested in actually representing Aurora’s residents get Council seats.
The 70% acquittal rate (no conviction) is what most disturbs me. That suggests a huge misguided waste of time and money by the police and courts OR that the public defenders are really skilled at getting guilty people acquitted.
It’s the former. They are too eager to prosecute on shaky grounds
Or that the prosecution ought to be put out to bid as maybe they are next to incompetent. The prosecution’s failure to disclose credibility issues as a pattern over an extended period of time ought to have had the head of that unit and the City Attorney himself fired immediately.
Glad it’s all over. I believed from the beginning it was just a plan to save Aurora taxpayers money. It blew up for something it wasn’t and hope the City Council continues to try to save taxpayers money anywhere they can. $2.58 million seems a lot to spend every year on lawyers for poor people.
It was interesting to see how the Top lawyer, ACLU and others spoke out loud about their job security, “independence” and importance of their job. They helped develop a lot of misunderstanding and lost a lot of time fighting against their bosses. Again, I’m personally glad it is over.
This episode is no more than a lesson to be learned that the city has their own internal law firm- if you will, providing a service at a cost at or below the market price. Although other firms likely considered this outsourced work as an opportunity to increase their own market share, the margins were not there. As these new city lawyers get experience, they move on for higher salaries outside the cities cap. The turn-over rate is not examined or tracked in depth, as this is a real cost to a regular private business. I suspect it’s right up there in Aurora, and that’s a value not easily converted to something on a cost ledger. This principal and desire to making a strong income goes for the city prosecutors’ side as well. Lots of new faces, picking up these cases in these positions in the court room all the time.
We have a method that uses both in Maricopa County AZ for felonies where contact attorneys Handel conflicts and when public defenders office is full. There are legal limits to how many cases PD can have or be deemed ineffective. Misdemeanor courts all have contract counsel and they do a great jobs. Many actually are former PD that want to have control of their schedule for family and childcare needs. If done right it is a great model. Most also have decades of experience.