Articles
Local courts face steep budget cuts
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- Published on 08/16/2011 - 10:49 am
- Written by Ben Keller
This year, California’s courts are being asked to trim expenses by $350 million as part of the system's share of hits in the newly passed budget.
It’s the highest single-year reduction since the state began paying trial court costs 14 years ago, equating to around a 6.7 percent reduction for all county superior courts. For many, it’s just another push to tighten their belts as they’ve been doing consistently for the last several years.
For the past three years, Fresno County Superior Court has lost up to $11 million annually from a combination of direct cuts from the state and other decreases. Court Executive Officer Tamara Beard said the sacrifice this fiscal year looks to be in the neighborhood of $13 to $14 million, most of that related to efficiency measures.
On top of that, more than $14 million was recently shifted from the court to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department in response to a statewide cost-saving plan that transferred certain inmates in California prisons to local jails. Another state plan carried through by the governor took away state support for court security, leaving that function solely to the counties.
“In order to deal with increased costs that were unfunded, they had to reduce deputy positions,” Beard said. “We were at 130, and now take off 15. At 115 [deputies], that will impact prisoner transportation and screening stations at all the courts.”
Aside from 12 mandatory furlough days for each of the last two years — representing a 4.96 percent salary decrease for staff — the Fresno County court also closed four facilities, including its Fowler and Kerman courthouses and its Juvenile Dependency Court on the Fulton Mall, which will complete its move into the main Fresno courthouse this month.
In addition, janitorial services were scaled back 60 percent countywide. And when Gov. Jerry Brown announced $200 million in reduced support for state courts back in March —now met by another $150 million in cuts in the 2011-12 budget — officials immediately implemented a hiring freeze leading to a 22 percent vacancy rate.
The current 10-percent vacancy rate is estimated to save the court about $5 million a year, Beard said.
“We’re considered an underfunded, understaffed and underjudged court, so those vacancies hurt us a little more than others might be,” she said.
Beard noted that the court has actually been very lucky overall with bonds and court user fees, seeing through a $70.9 million renovation to the B.F. Sisk courthouse in downtown Fresno last year and the $141 million Juvenile Justice Center completed in 2006.
Officials with the Kings County Superior Court asked management and staff for voluntary furlough days in the year ahead on top of the 12 furlough days that employees were forced to take last year.
Court Executive Officer Todd Barton said they have also discussed reducing hours at some of the satellite court sites and possibly closing the courthouse in Avenal to help reduce its budget by $503,000, its share of the $138.2 million to be cut from the state’s trial courts.
“If we should close that office, you have a problem with local law enforcement and you have a problem with the public,” Barton said, referring to a lack of transportation when Avenal residents must travel to Hanford for court services.
Barton also mentioned that he has also been speaking at length to court vendors in pursuit of the best financial deals. And like most courts, Kings County Superior Court has been drawing on its reserve money for different projects that would have otherwise been supported by the state.
None of that, he said, is helped by the fact that the court is in need of more judges, leading to backlog in processing cases that is only made worse with a hiring freeze that is still in effect.
“Do we handle criminal cases or civil cases more?” Barton pondered. “Well, we have to handle the criminal case. We can’t do it equally now.”
State courts have already been made aware that the 2012-13 budget will likely compel cuts of up to 15.2 percent of budgets. For the Kings County Superior Court, that’s an additional $530,000 gone.
With a budget of around $8.3 million, the Madera County Superior Court looks to trim $1.8 million. Much of that will be done through lowering operating costs, said Court Executive Officer Bonnie Thomas, along with freezing positions and maintaining vacancies, currently at around 10 to 15 percent.
“We’re not planning on doing layoffs or court closures,” she said. “We’re using reserves and we’ve reduced training, travel and operating expenses.”
So far, officials with the Tulare County Superior Court have not made any firm decisions about their plans on dealing with their $1.2 million share of the reductions. Last fiscal year, similar cuts to its $28-million budget led to furlough days, the elimination of 11 positions and had much of the Dinuba operations redistributed to the main Visalia court.
Since 2008, the state Administrative Office of the Courts says funding for trial courts has been reduced $614 million while total judicial branch spending has been slashed by $647 million.
To deal with some of the more recent reductions, the AOC has made several creative but costly modifications to its budget this year, including transferring $170 million from two of the court’s construction funds, taking $20 million from another construction-related account and spending $10 million less on the California Court Case Management System, an uncompleted $1.3 billion-and-rising computer project first proposed in 2004.
