Thumbs up for Lake County Board of Supervisors and the County of Lake taxpayers.
At the last meeting the board discussed replacing the contract with Mr. Carter to furnish public defenders in Lake County. We have had a contract with Mr. Carter that has been in effect for approximately 14 years, and the board voted to keep the contract with Mrs. Carter and the battery of lawyers furnished to the County of Lake as before originally contracted. The reason for that was that Mr. Perry, I believe, stated it would cost the county between $2-300,000 per year to get our own battery of lawyers. Then we would have to hire lawyers, give them office space, telephones, computers, desks; and that would be unfair to the defendants in trouble because we would have created a new county bureaucracy of employees, pay health insurance, future retirement; then we would have to hire someone for management and automatically add a co-worker buddy-buddy system with the DA”s office that would consist of co-working with the county and the DA”s office instead of less costs working with outside attorneys.
That was very brilliant thinking on the County of Lake. It”s a win-win situation for the tax payers and a win-win for the Carter law firm owner and lawyers. It would have been a thumbs down if the bureaucracy for the county and more big government had to be set up, which would cost the taxpayers more big money.
The way it is now the County of Lake has no strings attached and no bureaucracy because it is all outside people by contract.
Ron Rose, Lakeport
