A plan to house additional public defenders for the local court system is moving forward.
At Tuesday's Cole County Commission meeting, commissioners approved moving county maintenance equipment and staff housed now in the basement of the Carnegie Building on Adams Street to a building across the street from Carnegie the county bought in May 2019. Commissioners are still looking into what the cost would be to make the lower level into office space.
Currently housed on the second floor of the Carnegie Building, the Public Defenders Office serves clients who cannot afford legal services and are appointed to do so by courts in Cole, Miller and Moniteau counties.
The office now has nine lawyers working there. Three more are scheduled to come on board in August or September.
The new defenders are coming thanks to state lawmakers earmarking $1 million to hire 15 new public defenders to eliminate some waiting lists for public defender services across the state.
Gov. Mike Parson later gave his approval to the plan.
State statute requires the counties that house public defenders offices to pay the costs of maintaining the offices. It also requires, if the office serves more than one county, that those other counties share the operating costs based on each county's population size.
According to figures from the Cole County Finance Office, Miller County paid $5,536.37 and Moniteau County paid $3,517.50 for operating the Cole County Public Defenders Office in 2020. Cole County funded the remaining $16,829.13, bringing the total maintenance cost to $25,883.
"The lower level of Carnegie is actually where the public defender's office was first located years ago," Western District Commissioner Harry Otto said.
"This plan allows all the defenders to stay in one building, which was what they were hoping to do."