More than 500 employees in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender signed a petition this spring raising concerns about how a $16 million wage increase will be divvied up among workers.

The 546 petitioners worry that some employees will remain underpaid even while managers and administrators receive raises, according to a copy of the petition shared with The Denver Post by the newly-formed Defenders Union of Colorado, which organized the effort and submitted the petition to agency leadership last month.

The employee group, which was created last year, has not been recognized as a union by the Office of the State Public Defender, but nevertheless is pushing for transparency and a seat at the table during the budgeting process. The public defender’s office has close to 1,000 employees; its attorneys represent people charged with crimes who can’t afford to hire an attorney or who are in jail.

“The culture has been so silent on this issue for so long,” said James Hardy, an executive board co-chair with the union. “The reaction to anyone who says, ‘I’m having trouble paying bills’ is like, ‘Well, go get another job.’ So the fact that 550 people signed on to this in less than a week, just shows how commonly held these frustrations are and how deeply folks want transparency about these issues, and want to know what they can expect.”

Gov. Jared Polis this month signed off on a $16.1 million budget increase in order to boost salaries at the public defender’s office after an outside study last summer found that a full 98% of positions at regional offices were underpaid compared to similar jobs in the public sector.

But tentative early budgeting documents showed plans to give raises to some already well-paid positions in the agency, while some other positions remained underpaid. The petition calls for the public defender’s office to bring all positions up to at least a market rate, and to refrain from giving raises to employees who are already paid at the market rate until that is done.

“Everyone should be at or above market,” said Matt Haugen, an executive board co-chair with the union.

James Karbach, director of legislative policy for the public defender’s office, said in a statement that the office is focused on addressing “the pay of employees who are the most under market” and said agency leadership has tried to answer employee questions about the raises and the upcoming switch to a different pay structure.

“We expect to finalize the new compensation plan structure — including communication of the new pay grids, policies and individual salary notices to employees — by late June,” he wrote.

But petition organizers say they’ve been frustrated by noncommittal responses from management. Five days after the petition was sent to administration, the agency’s human resources director, Veronica Sandoval Graves, sent out an email in which she said employees would receive letters in July with their new salary information, but did not offer any immediate detail on the new pay amounts.

Graves disputed the union’s characterization of the plan to dispense the $16 million, saying that the agency is not “giving raises to the highest paid individuals in our system when we have others not even making enough to pay rent,” according to a copy of the email shared with The Post.

“This is not an accurate statement about what is happening,” she said in the email. “…The first focus in allocation of the salary money has been the non-management groups, which contain the bulk of our employees, to ensure we can fund the new step-and-grade system for them as they stay longer and benefit from salary and career progression.”

Hardy and other union members said they believe the petition pushed management to offer more details than they otherwise would have. But they said the information shared with employees isn’t sufficient.

“It’s great to say raises are on the way, but people need to know what is going to work for their budget in July, August, going forward,” Hardy said. “And we don’t know. The response to all this has been, ‘You’ll find out when you find out.’”

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