![]() “It’s working, but I’m exhausted.”Ĭovey said on several occasions he has gone from courtroom to the restaurant and ended up serving someone who he worked with or saw earlier in the day. “The sole reason is to save up enough extra money … for that two or three months to pay the bills,” Covey said. ![]() So three nights a week Covey works as a server or bartender at Pedro’s Mexican restaurant on the west side of Madison. “I did my numbers and realized there was no way I could stay afloat unless I got a second job,” Covey said.īased on his caseload last year and the fact that he has “35 to 50” active appointments, Covey said it is possible that as much as $15,000, or a quarter of his annual earnings, will have to be deferred until after July 1. Now almost 75 percent of his workload comes from public defender appointments, so Covey said he started planning last June for how he could survive a potential absence of income. The 2002 graduate of the University of Madison Law School is a solo practitioner in Madison and does primarily criminal defense work. ![]() While the problem is not new to the SPD, it is for Covey who only began taking appointments in 2006. SPD officials said they are still working with the DOA to avoid a lapse this April. “But the provision allowed for money to be diverted each year.”ĭuring the last budget cycle a $12.7 million gap was avoided through a $3 million allocation from the Department of Administration and an additional $9.7 million from the budget repair bill. “Our expectation was that when the budget bill passed, that the gap had been closed,” Smith said. Approximately $2.3 million from the SPD’s private bar appropriation fund was redirected each year of the biennium, which is why the agency could have to defer payments for three months.
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