The Idaho Senate and House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1202, which sets the State Public Defender 2026 budget at $83 million. The budget still needs to be approved by Idaho Gov. Brad Little.

The proposed budget will allow the State Public Defender’s office to continue developing our client-centered and unified approach to indigent defense across the state while raising the hourly rates for contract and conflict attorneys from $100 to $125 to improve coverage in Idaho’s remote and rural areas.

The budget request also calls for $6.4 million in merit-based salary increases for attorneys in our 12 institutional offices, to increase pay for attorneys who handle complex litigation – and make those wages competitive with other government agencies.

“We’ve learned so much since taking over public defense in October,” State Public Defender Eric Fredericksen said earlier this year. “We found out we had deeply committed people working to ensure indigent Idahoans have the protection they deserve under the U.S. Constitution. It also didn’t take long to identify the need to increase the budget for public defense across the state.”

When the SPD took over in October, the initial salary matrix for employees was based on years of service – which led to increases for most attorneys but did not account for what kind of cases they specialized in.

The 2026 budget adds $6.4 million to allow our agency to add a merit component, which would recognize the work attorneys have done to take on the most complex cases, in addition to how long they have worked in public defense.

The budget calls for an increase in the SPD contract rate from $100 to $125 an hour, so we can offer a more competitive rate to private attorneys who cover Idaho’s 30 counties without an institutional office – and the contract attorneys who provide conflict coverage for the entire state.

We established our current contract attorney rate of $100 an hour based on budget estimates from 2021. While our office eliminated unconstitutional flat fee contracts when we took over, it didn’t take long to determine the hourly rates needed to be higher to help contract attorneys pay for staff support.

The 2026 budget also contains a supplemental request that will allow the salary and contract rates to go into effect as soon as the budget is approved, which should relieve pressure on contract attorneys across Idaho. Review the 2026 budget here.

The new budget also calls for the creation of new institutional public defense offices in Elmore, Jerome, Benewah, and Shoshone counties; an appropriation to pay for public defense in Child Protection Act cases; and funding to cover the cost of court transcripts.