BATON ROUGE - A house bill aimed at securing stable funding for the East Baton Rouge Parish public defender's office is headed to the governor's desk to be signed into law. The bill seeks to replace a shared city funding model with a $1 million commitment from the parish's general fund.

The bill was authored by state Rep. C. Denise Marcelle, who originally called for every city in East Baton Rouge Parish to split the public defender's bill.

St. George, Baker, and Central also agreed to provide a combined $400,000 as part of a partnership with the public defender's office. Zachary is the only city not committing funding.

"You can't have a judicial system that's lopsided; you've got to have judges, you've got to have public defenders, and you certainly have to have DAs and law enforcement. So all of them work hand in hand together. And so when we talk about crime, we have to look at it holistically," Marcelle said.

Marcelle says the bill is part of a broader effort to ensure every part of the criminal justice system has the resources it needs. Last month, District Attorney Hillar Moore sued the city-parish in hopes of fully funding his department.

"And so if we could come up with a concept where we could make sure that the public defender is not grabbing for crumbs every year or the DA's office is not grabbing for crumbs every year, and we could have a sustainable judicial system to move the process forward," Marcelle said.

Chief Public Defender Kyla Romanac says the bill is critical for her department, pointing to an existing backlog of cases in Baton Rouge.

"So I mean, obviously, there's a backlog of cases in Baton Rouge, and that would have just made it substantially worse," Romanac said.

Romanac says the funding will also help the office recruit and retain staff.

"The local funding helps us to at least have enough where we are able to find some quality people who are willing to work for what we can pay; without that local funding, we would not be able to staff that office," Romanac said.