Debate brewing over new County public defender

A battle is brewing over who should choose Monroe County’s next public defender.  Ed Nowak is stepping down after running that office for 30 years. Now some community leaders are concerned his replacement may be more about politics than merit.

Dozens of people came out to Aenon Baptist Church in Rochester to call for the Monroe County Legislature to stick to a community-based selection process in replacing retiring public defender Edward Nowack.    

“What we're requesting is for the president of the legislature to allow the Monroe County Bar Association to do a screening process for candidates that they will ultimately send over and then let...the legislature will make that appointment,” says city council member lovely warren who heads the coalition for a fair and independent Monroe County public defender.

Warren says she worries the panel county legislature president Wayne Zyra has assembled to choose Nowak’s replacement might cloud the process.

“We don’t feel the president of the legislature should conduct the process because then it becomes clouded with political innuendos and things like that.”

“We want to keep that most of us say make it a nonpartisan process, make it merit based go after the best candidate no matter where that candidate is and let us go forward,” says democratic NYS Assemblyman David Gantt.

The coalition also questions the diversity of the panel.  Many of the people who depend on the public defenders office are poor, African-American or Hispanic.  Only one member of he panel in African-American.

 “at stake is that eventually what could happen is poor people the people that are most vulnerable in this community will no longer be served by the public defenders office,” says warren.

It’s a matter of fairness and I think in the interest of community togetherness its important that the president of the legislature at least reach out to the community and lets go and maintain the same system that's been so successful over the years,” says Reverend Franklin Florence.