Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
Klickitat County Commissioners had one last session on December 31st to wrap up the year’s end. The 12-and-a-half-minute session was billed as a continuation of the regular December 30 meeting and dealt with a single subject – the public defender contract. By law, counties and cities in Washington are responsible for providing legal representation for people charged with crimes who cannot afford a lawyer.
At a time of shrinking budgets, this has become increasingly challenging for local governments. Klickitat County had published a request for proposals and only received one applicant, attorney Lori Hoctor, who has been fulfilling that role.
Chair Ron Ihrig said:
“We are retaining Lori because of the Supreme Court ruling that the caseload goes down by 10 percent per year. We have 10 years to get there, but it starts affecting us year one. This is going back to the Supreme Court that the state needs to help fund the decisions they make and put on us, because right now this is an unfunded mandate.”
He also said the negotiations had gone on until the last minute, with help from Skamania County Attorney Adam Kick.
The final contract lists the salary as $156,000 for 2026, $164,784 for 2027 and $177,132 for 2028. In order to respect the Supreme Court’s order, Ms. Hoctor will be limited to 135 felony cases in 2026, 121 in 2027 and 109 in 2028. The contract notes that an additional counsel will have to be retained in order to cover the remaining cases.
He added that there was enough money in budget to cover 2026, but they would probably have to add money in 2027 and defintely in 2028, even though a cost of living provision had been removed from the contract.