THE GLARING disparity between compensation rates for assigned counsel in the state and federal courts in New York is about to become even greater.

Under an appropriation bill approved last December, the rate of pay for counsel assigned by federal judges to represent indigent criminal defendants in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – as well as much of the rest of the nation – will jump from $75 an hour to $90 an hour on May 1.