PAYETTE â With Payette County Courthouse officials resuming trials as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes in Idaho, the question remains of how to pay for the backlog of cases which resulted from restrictions on operations in 2020. To address this concern, Public Defender Jolene Maloney and Judge Brian Lee addressed the Payette County Board of Commissioners on May 10 with their plan as presently written.
According to Maloney, the county is presently running over budget because of a backlog of warrants pre-dating the 2020-21 fiscal year. However, she said, Public Defense Commission officials anticipated this would happen.
âWe had a lot of filings come into the prosecutorâs office; Instead of officers arresting people, they had just written reports and then those reports turned into complaints and warrants,â said Maloney. âA lot of those folks have been coming in, so weâre doing a little bit of catch-up.â