Dispute over hiring policy in CT Public Defender’s office points to new turmoil
There is more turmoil at the agency that provides legal services for the state’s indigent over a memo from the Chief Public Defender instructing staff to disregard official hiring policy promulgated by the agency’s’ oversight board.
The disagreement at the increasingly fractured agency appears to have arisen as the Public Defender Services Commission, which has authority under state law over hiring, considers measures that would spread involvement in hiring decisions beyond agency executive offices in Hartford to include field managers, for whom new hires would work.
As part of its consideration, the commission “affirmed” what is known as its policy 205 dealing with interviewing and hiring job candidates. Chairman Richard N. Palmer notified agency staff it had done so in a January 10 email distributed through the division’s legal counsel.
Eight days later, without consulting the commission, Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis distributed an all agency email of her own, informing staff that the commission was mistaken.
“The policy distributed on Jan. 10, 2024, was incorrect,” Bowden-Lewis wrote. “Please see the attached and correct version of policy #205. The Commission at its meeting on Jan. 9, 2024, ‘reconfirmed and confirmed’ policy #205. If you have any questions, please reach out to the HR department.”
The similar version of 205 that Bowden-Lewis attached to her email appears to have been created four years later by the division’s human resources department as an elaboration on the official commission policy. The email, with its implied criticism of the commission, was widely disseminated by agency employees.
Bowden-Lewis did not immediately reply to a request to discuss the matter.
A day later, in response, Palmer circulated another memo assuring staff that the commission had correctly distributed the official division policy and addressing “misstatements contained in an email you received yesterday evening from Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis.”
“Neither I nor Legal Counsel was informed of the Chief Public Defender’s email before it was forwarded to you yesterday,” Palmer wrote.
“Contrary to the Chief Public Defender’s representation, the email sent to you by Legal Counsel at my request was correct in all respects,” Palmer wrote. “The policy attached to that email, Policy 205 of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual, has been in effect since 2014 and it is indeed the policy that was reaffirmed by the Commission at its meeting on January 9, 2024.”
The email exchange, provided to The Courant by agency employees, is another sign of strained relationships that have developed over Bowden-Lewis’s 18 months as chief of the Division of Public Defender Services. Her appointment as the first Black woman to lead the agency was greeted as a milestone in diversity. But she has since become a divisive figure because of what colleagues call a preoccupation with matters of race and what critics say is a record of retaliating against those who challenge her decisions.
She has been publicly reprimanded by the commission, with which she has clashed over limits on her authority as Chief Public Defender.
In the area of hiring, there has been concern expressed by division lawyers and others that unit heads and field supervisors have not been allowed sufficient involvement in hiring decisions. In some cases, supervisors have complained they have been unable to learn why some candidates are granted job interviews and others are not.
Palmer raised the subject at a recent commission meeting, saying concerns about field involvement in hiring predate Bowden-Lewis’s appointment.
“There has been some concern that the hiring decisions and interview decisions and that sort of thing ought to be less centralized,” Palmer said in an interview Monday. “The people in the field ought to be more involved in those decisions. The version of (the policy) that we affirmed does some of that. But the commission is looking into doing it to a greater extent.”