Legislature President Wayne Zyra has scrapped his proposed public defender selection committee, but opponents say it's no victory.

"He apparently is abandoning any pretense of selecting on merit," Monroe County Bar Association President Tom Smith said Tuesday morning.

Zyra disbanded the committee Monday and directed the Lej's Public Safety Committee to interview applicants instead. The full Legislature has the authority to appoint a public defender. In a statement, Zyra said he was doing it to protect judges from "baseless" ethical complaints. The Bar Association has argued that "serious ethical issues exist for any judge who participates in a legislatively-created screening panel." As proposed, the committee would have included Bar Association appointments, Republican and Democratic judges, and political appointments.

The Bar Association and a growing list of community leaders and groups have been pressuring legislators for a non-political selection panel. Legislature Democrats, too, want an independent group. The Bar Association led two non-political committees, one in 1974 and the other in 1977.

Retired Public Defender Ed Nowak says he won't take sides in the debate over the selection of his successor. But politics have no place in the defender's office, Nowak said at a January 10 forum at Aenon Baptist Church, if it is to provide adequate and competent defense for Monroe County's poor. The public defender must be able to buffer patronage pressures and to work with county officials of any party, he said.

The county's public defenders have a grueling job, Nowak says. In City Court, each defender handles 1,000 clients per year, in town courts each has 700 clients per year, and attorneys handling felonies have between 100 and 200 clients a year. In Family Court, eight attorneys split 2,500 cases. Frequently, defenders work days in excess of 12 hours, Nowak said, and for the past three years, Nowak's office has received no new staff, despite increasing caseloads.

"That's why it's important to hire people who want to be public defenders," Nowak said. If they're just looking for a job, he said, they won't dedicate themselves to the cases.