CA: San Berdoo p.d.s need closure

Remember this chief p.d.'s bad personnel debacle?

Six months after they dumped him, the San Berdoo Co. Board of Supes still doesn't have its act together:

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors began searching for a permanent public defender in March, a month after it appointed Gerald Farber on an interim basis.

Farber confirmed that he has applied and interviewed for the permanent post, a job he thinks would be a fitting end to his 34 years with the office.

But the supervisors have yet to make that call...

Farber replaced former Public Defender John Roth, who stepped down in February after supervisors suspended him for hiring an attorney who had been convicted of bribing jail inmates to drum up business for his private practice...

The fact Farber hasn't been tapped for the permanent post hasn't stopped him from making changes in the past six months.

...[H]e immediately put an end to Roth's practice of rotating the office's 100 attorneys among its 13 offices. The policy was intended to prevent public defenders from getting cozy with judges and prosecutors, but Farber said it hurt morale.

...Farber has been looking at separating the Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana branches to give attorneys in Fontana more autonomy...

...Farber said he plans to revamp the case-assignment system to ensure the workload is evenly distributed and improve relationships between attorneys and clients.

"It's a common complaint from our clients. "You're the fourth attorney I've seen,' " Farber said. "I want to stop that. I don't want to reinvent the wheel four and five times."

The agency would operate better, he said, under a system that allows an attorney to stay with a case from the moment the Public Defender's Office is appointed.

Building attorney autonomy and morale, providing vertical representation and better representation to the clients... why again didn't they make the interim guy's appointment permanent months ago? After all, it's not like he's only been with the office for 34 years...