Miami prosecutors just got sizable raises. Will Broward counterparts get them too?

To stem the exodus of poorly paid state-funded prosecutors and defense attorneys, Florida lawmakers earlier this year passed a law mandating starting pay of $50,000 a year.

But what was hailed as an important step in recruiting and keeping talented young lawyers may have an unintended, and dispiriting effect.

When the pay bump starts in October, new hires straight out of law school — usually assigned to handle drunk drivers, trespassers, and people caught with tiny amounts of drugs — may be earning the same, or even more, than seasoned colleagues tasked with handling major shootings, robberies and rape cases.

In response, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle has announced an across-the-board pay raise for all of its prosecutors, ranging from $1,000 to $8,000 a year. The move is being widely lauded for an agency — the biggest State Attorney’s Office in Florida — that has been ravaged by departures in recent years, mostly lawyers leaving for better paying legal jobs.

Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez, throughout the year, has also been doling out staggered raises of $5,000 to lawyers. “By the time Oct. 1 arrives, not a single individual who is an attorney in our office is going to make the same or less than the new attorneys,” he told the Miami Herald.

But counterparts in Broward County are still poring over the books to find money for existing employees. As of now, a new hire at the Broward Public Defender’s Office would make more than Stephanie Alitsan, 35, who will soon complete three years with the office.

Earning just over $49,000, Alitsan lives in a small North Miami studio. She spends about $80 a week on gas to drive to the Broward criminal courthouse, to defend poor clients accused of burglaries, batteries and fleeing and eluding police.

Every meal, every toll has to be budgeted at the beginning of the month, when the paycheck comes in. She also pays $200 monthly to pay down law-school debt.

“I’m living check to check, month to month,” Alitsan said. “To be quite honest, I probably qualify for public assistance at this point.”

Assistant state attorneys and public defenders have never made big money, but the low salaries and decreased benefits have become more glaring as the cost of housing in South Florida has skyrocketed over the past 15 years.

During the Great Recession, when jobs were drying up, it wasn’t hard for the publicly funded offices to hire and retain candidates. But as the economy has bounced back, civil firms have increasingly poached lawyers who cut their teeth trying cases in South Florida criminal courts.

In Miami-Dade alone, 72 prosecutors left the office between July 2018 and March 1, a clip so rapid that younger lawyers are being thrust into more complex cases sooner. The losses were equally as stark at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where the number of lawyers is 186, well below the 220 needed to run at full strength.

During the spring’s legislative session, Fernandez Rundle and Martinez joined other elected state attorneys and public defenders in lobbying lawmakers to raise the starting salary to $50,000. The Legislature agreed, but would not fund extra money to iron out the disparity between existing employees and the new hires.

Among government workers, that disparity is known as a “compression.” Notoriously, mid- and late career Miami-Dade teachers got stiffed when the pay scale was changed in 2015, meaning many of those educators wound up making barely more than new hires.

The fear is of the same happening statewide among the offices of state attorneys and public defenders.

“That can be very demoralizing in our office and we are trying to account for that,” said Broward Chief Assistant Public Defender Gordon Weekes.

Right now in South Florida, it usually takes anywhere between two and five years — and dozens of trials — for prosecutors and public defenders to work their way up to earning $50,000 a year.

In Miami-Dade, new prosecutors were starting at $41,500. Fernandez Rundle, in a four-page email to her staff late last month, said pay raises for all the existing prosecutors were drawn from the coffers filled thanks to “fiscal restraints and conservative fiscal policies” over the years.

In all, the office came up with more than $840,000 to give raises to existing lawyers, as well as an additional $461,100 to support staff.

“We worked very hard on crunching numbers, on saving money throughout the year, suffering a little bit by not filling every vacancy,” Fernandez Rundle told the Miami Herald. “We planned ahead and were able to do these sweeping increases.”

Now, a “division chief” prosecutor who tries murderers, drunk drivers who kill and others facing life sentences will earn a minimum of $73,000, up from $65,000. Prosecutors in a specialized unit such as narcotics or gangs will get boosts of $8,000.

The big increases did not escape notice in Broward, where it made a popular blog for the county’s criminal-justice community. Fernandez Rundle’s email was published under the headline “Morale Buster!”

Prosecutor pay issues have been in the news after the Broward New Times reported that State Attorney Mike Satz is bringing back several retiring high-ranking prosecutors who will receive a salary in addition to their pensions.

He’s defended the moves as necessary because the office is prosecuting Parkland mass shooter Nikolas Cruz, a unique and complex death-penalty case. The office also says the way the four prosecutors are being brought back — through an outside contracting firm — will free up $490,000 to pay for raises for the rank-and-file.

The pay raises in Miami spurred Broward Chief Assistant State Attorney Jeff Marcus to email his prosecutors assuring them salary boosts were on the way. The office’s executive director, Monica Hofheinz, said the new pay package will be revealed in the coming weeks.

“It’s really going to improve retention and recruitment,” Hofheinz said.

Weekes, of the Public Defender’s Office, said his office is also working toward finding monies for more pay. The office right now had about 133 lawyers. Workloads are also crushing; the office is also defending Cruz, whose case requires the full-time attention of multiple lawyers, as well as investigators and other staff.

“It’s a constant see-saw battle of resources,” Weekes said. “We have very skilled and dedicated attorneys. We need to pay them appropriately.”

This story was originally published August 9, 2019 at 6:30 AM.