Gwinnett County is reviewing billing procedures for indigent defense attorneys to improve a system that has been criticized as under-regulated.
The audit began in late May, according to a county memo. Matthew Whitley, who heads the county's Performance Analysis Division, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his findings should be released later this week.
That could bring more scrutiny to a billing system that District Attorney Danny Porter has criticized as being fundamentally flawed.
"Number one, it's inefficient, number two, it's an invitation to steal and number three, it's completely unaudited and unmanaged," Porter said. "It's extremely frustrating. And I think if somebody really did look at this, people would be outraged."
Instead of employing salaried public defenders, Gwinnett County is among a handful of counties that use private defense attorneys who bill the county by the hour.
Recorder's Court Judge Rodney Harris is under investigation by Porter's office for submitting $1.1 million worth of bills to the county between 2005 and 2010, when Harris worked as an indigent defense attorney in Juvenile and Recorder's courts.
Many of Harris' bills, which were handwritten, were deemed illegible or unauditable when county auditors examined them earlier this year. But in a random sample of 14 days in 2007, auditors found three days where Harris billed more than 24 hours. And there were five days where he billed more than 21 hours.
Another defense attorney, Christopher T. Adams, is awaiting trial for allegedly submitting false bills totaling about $40,000.
In May, the Indigent Defense Governing Committee asked the county to perform a more detailed audit of Harris' bills after an audit of Harris' 2007 bills revealed irregularities. Whitley recommended against it in a memo to Chairman Charlotte Nash, County Administrator Glenn Stephens and Porter.
"A great deal of time has already been spent reviewing invoices that ultimately were not useful for auditing purposes," Whitley's memo concluded.
Instead, Whitley recommended taking a fresh look at the operations of the entire indigent defense billing system.
The Indigent Defense Governing Committee is comprised of six volunteers who select attorneys and approve their bills. Its chairman, David Lipscomb, has said the committee doesn't have time to review the approximately 12,000 invoices it receives annually. It only reviews invoices that reflect above-average costs.
A new electronic billing system that will be operational in a few months should improve accuracy by flagging bills that are submitted improperly, Lipscomb said.
The last time the indigent defense system was audited was four years ago. That audit uncovered numerous problems.
Twenty-five of 60 high-dollar invoices examined had errors, but 19 of them had been approved anyway. Fourty-six of the invoices lacked any committee approval. The auditors also found instances where duplicate bills had been submitted and approved.
The audit recommended the county invest in an electronic case management system to cut down on errors. It also recommended other controls, like creating two separate indigent defense committees -- one for selecting attorneys to be on the panel, another for handling invoices. Having the same committee perform both tasks could be a conflict of interest, the audit found.
But in a written response to the audit, the committee said creating two independent committees would be "impractical." The committee also declined to adopt the other recommendations, stating those issues would be resolved once an electronic case management system was in place.
The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council began working with the county in 2007 to create that system, but the project stalled for several years when the state staffer in charge was replaced. His successor declined to participate any further.
In 2009, Gwinnett received a federal grant for $98,550 to finish the project, which should be operational by October.
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