Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed into law a raise for striking bar advocates, but movement leaders say it’s not enough.

“This agreement provides a substantial raise for bar advocates that reflects our commitment to supporting the important work that they do, even in a challenging budget year,” Healey wrote in a statement following the bill signing. “I’m grateful to the Legislature for their work to pass this supplemental budget as it is important to public safety, due process and the functioning of our courts.”

The bill will provide an immediate $10-per-hour pay raise to be followed by another $10-per-hour raise next year. The raise applies to district court-level bar advocates, who are attorneys appointed to represent criminal defendants who cannot afford an attorney.

When fully phased in, the raise amounts to a 30% wage increase — the largest rate hike in 20 years, according to the Healey administration.

But that’s just the problem, according to leaders of the ongoing bar advocate “work stoppage,” which has paralyzed court activity and led to defendants being released from detention and having their cases dismissed.

Sean Delaney, one of the movement’s leaders, spoke from the State House’s Grand Staircase last Thursday against the proposed rate increase ahead of a vote. He called the relatively modest increase a “slap in the face” that ignored the financial pressures bar advocates face, which includes law school debt and paying for their own benefits out of pocket.

The House and Senate passed the proposal, which was tucked away into a supplemental budget bill, later that day.

Just as Delaney said at the Grand Staircase, the law’s passage and Healey’s signature did not appease them.

“The degree of the administration’s involvement in the process is unknown, but one thing is clear: this was an action largely dictated by a handful of people, at the very top of the state Legislature, more intent on demonstrating who is the boss, than in bringing an end to the severe constitutional crisis that was a result of their decades of neglect,” a joint bar advocate press release states.

The statement says the increase from $65 to $75 per hour — which doesn’t mention the eventual increase to $85 — was “anything but” the “ ‘deal’ or ‘agreement’ ” legislative leaders made it out to be and that “they shut bar advocates out of the process entirely.”

They say the bar advocates’ request of $100 per hour was “a very reasonable proposal” that would still leave Massachusetts pay trailing that of surrounding states — despite its status as one of the highest cost-of-living states in the nation.

“One thing that the Legislature didn’t factor into its equation is that bar advocates are more determined than ever to make sure that constitutionally mandated obligations to their indigent clients are met, and that the fight for fair pay and a living wage for those who defend these rights continues,” they say.

Work stoppage

A majority of bar advocates at the district court level in Middlesex and Suffolk counties stopped taking on new cases in late May. The following month, the Supreme Judicial Court — Massachusetts’ highest court — ordered what is known as the Lavallee Protocol for the two affected counties.

This protocol has two prongs to deal with unrepresented criminal defendants.

First, anyone held for longer than a week without legal representation is to be released from detention. Second, anyone without legal representation for 45 days is to have their case dismissed.

The situation has led to scores of defendants being released from jail and having their cases dismissed due to a lack of legal representation, which is a constitutional right.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed into law a raise for striking bar advocates. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)