Mower County has been forced to react to the state’s reduction in court funding.

In order to continue a valuable tool, the county will hire its own public defender.

The Minnesota Legislature’s attempt to balance the state budget saw the legislators drastically curtail district court funding, county coordinator Craig Oscarson told the county commissioners meeting Tuesday afternoon.

One of the hardest hit areas was the state’s public defenders’ handing of Children in need of Protective Services (CHIPS) petitions.

As public defenders were laid off their jobs by the state’s massive court spending reduction, this left the area of CHIPS petitions in jeopardy, according to Oscarson.

“The last day for handing CHIPS petitions in district court is July 7,” Oscarson said. “After that date, there will be no money to fund the public defenders’ work with CHIPS petitions.”

The solution, according to advice from the Association of Minnesota Counties, is for individual counties to pick up funding the public defenders’ CHIPS work.

Oscarson met last week with Third Judicial District Court judges and a representative from the state public defenders’ office to discuss options.

The consensus was to hire an attorney from the private sector to handle CHIPS cases at the rate of $75 per hour and based on the anticipated number of cases that would result in an unanticipated cost of $40,000 a year ($20,000 for the rest of 2008).

Austin attorney Dan Donnelly has agreed to take on the CHIPS cases for Mower County.

Mower County Attorney Kristen Nelsen said Donnelly’s caseload will also include cases involving termination of parental rights.

Despite officials’ wishes to collect some money from the clients with a sliding fee scale, they doubted there would be much money to collect from the mostly indigent families.

The motion was unanimously approved by the commissioners to hire Donnelly.