STATE OF NEW YORK ________________________________________________________________________ 773--A 2015-2016 Regular Sessions IN SENATE (Prefiled) January 7, 2015 ___________ Introduced by Sen. PARKER -- read twice and ordered printed, and when printed to be committed to the Committee on Finance -- recommitted to the Committee on Finance in accordance with Senate Rule 6, sec. 8 -- committee discharged, bill amended, ordered reprinted as amended and recommitted to said committee AN ACT to amend the state finance law and the judiciary law, in relation to establishing a fund to assist public service attorneys practicing public service law to repay their student loans The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem- bly, do enact as follows: 1 Section 1. This act shall be known and may be cited as the "public 2 interest legal services loan assistance act". 3 § 2. Declaration of policy and legislative intent. The legislature 4 reaffirms that the efficient and effective provision of high-quality 5 legal services on behalf of the state, its political subdivisions and 6 the populations therein depends on competent, dedicated attorneys making 7 a long-term commitment to public-service work, whether as prosecutors, 8 public defenders or other indigent defense attorneys, civil legal 9 services attorneys, or the equivalent. The legislature finds, however, 10 that because these attorneys often carry significant and increasing 11 student loan debt burdens and have grave difficulty in repaying such 12 debts on the relatively low salaries paid by most public interest posi- 13 tions, many of these attorneys are being forced to leave public service. 14 The loss of so many capable public interest attorneys, often at the very 15 time they have achieved sufficient training and experience to handle the 16 most complex matters of public concern, has had an adverse impact on 17 government generally and reduced the capacity of the criminal and civil 18 justice systems to provide the consistently high-quality legal services 19 the people of New York state deserve. The legislature finds that the 20 difficulty of attracting and retaining well-trained public interest EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets [] is old law to be omitted. LBD01709-02-6