There are legislators who claim the cause of the state’s public defense crisis is somehow a question of Oregon Public Defense Commission leadership. They are wrong. It’s simple math. And the legislature needs to face that reality.

I spent eight years, from 2008 to 2016, as a lead state budget writer for the Oregon House of Representatives, and I waded through some very complex issues during that period of time. The crisis we are facing in public defense in Oregon does have some complexities, but at the bottom line, the math is very simple: We don’t have enough attorneys in the public defense system for the number of cases that need representation.

And we’re losing attorneys from the system faster than we are replacing them.

We’re losing them to retirement and we’re losing them because their pay is lower and their workloads are higher than attorneys who work outside of the public defense system.

It’s that basic, that bottom line.

And that is confirmed by every independent study of our public defense system that’s been done, including by the American Bar Association.

I’ve spent the last two and a half years as a member of the Oregon Public Defense Commission but I am speaking only for myself here.

We’ve hired an executive director who is experienced, smart and effective. She is building a stronger foundation for OPDC than it has had in decades.

The Legislature passed bills requiring us to do a market study of the compensation provided for public defenders in states around the country and what we need to offer in regard to compensation here in Oregon in order to be competitive in the legal world, both within and outside of public defense.

The Legislature required us to review national standards for caseloads for public defenders and recommend caseload standards for Oregon that comply with those national standards.

OPDC has completed both of those requirements.

This has resulted in a proposed 6-year plan to recruit and sustain a public defense workforce capable of meeting the demands on the system while paying a competitive rate and maintaining caseloads at an accepted national standard. That is the plan that we have delivered to the Governor and the Legislature, and it really isn’t complicated.

We need to increase the number of total attorneys in public defense in Oregon by an average of 80 attorneys a year for the next six years.

We need to compensate the public defense workforce at a competitive market rate and cap caseloads in alignment with national standards, thereby increasing the number of attorneys we recruit to public defense and decreasing the number of attorneys who leave the field each year.

It’s that basic. It’s that bottom-line.

I fully understand that the cost to accomplish this plan might be out of reach for the state budget. And that’s a valid discussion to have. But to somehow argue that the plan is too difficult to understand is, well, hard to understand. It’s not that complex.

There are many additional steps we can take as a public safety system to help mitigate the cost and address the crisis we’re facing, including the expansion of diversion programs (perhaps allowing judges instead of district attorneys to decide on diversions) and requiring our top five or six “crisis counties” to adopt scheduling practices and processes of large counties in our state, such as Lane County, who are not in crisis.

We can work together to solve the crisis, or we can blame OPDC for doing exactly what the Legislature required the commission to do. The math is what it is — we need more public defenders, we need to pay them at a market rate with a workload that doesn’t drive them out of the system. You can change executive directors every year for the next decade if you’d like, but that doesn’t change the math or the reality.

It’s not that complex.

Peter Buckley served as Democratic state representative from Jackson County in the Oregon House for 12 years, including 8 years as the House Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.