County inching closer to public defender’s office

Hays County is inching closer to establishing a public defender’s office. 

County commissioners Lon Shell and Debbie Ingalsbe, alongside Mano Amiga, provided an update regarding the public defender’s office on Tuesday. 

“Investment into representation instead of incarceration cannot come soon enough,” Mano Amiga Policy Director Eric Martinez said. “It is up to commissioners Shell and Ingalsbe to carry it forward to the [commissioners] court to make one of the defining moments of a decade — a moment where our community decided to bring a public defender’s office to people so desperately in need of one — to fight jail overcrowding, to fight the case backlog and to fight for a system for improved representation.”