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And when the new budget, comes out that estimate could jump to as much as $1 billion.
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Winona County District Court Judge Jeff Thompson explains the extent and ramifications of budgetary shortfalls in the state judicial branch while seated in his chambers at the Winona County courthouse recently. The district faces a $1.1 million deficit which will result in a cutback of public services and a loss of jobs within the courthouse beginning March 1.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
Although the entire state’s outlook is gloomy, the judicial branch’s outlook may be catastrophic.
For the Third Judicial District, which includes Winona County where officials say they’re already under-funded and told to “do more with less,” that’s a cut of about $300,000 for this fiscal year ending June 30, according to District Administrator Shelley Ellefson. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, the deficit will jump to $1.1 million.
That means the district may have to cut as many as 23 jobs, existing vacancies will not be filled and public services will be slashed.
Winona County Attorney Chuck MacLean criticized the state for trying to balance its own budget at the expense of local entities.
“When you squeeze the balloon, the air has to go somewhere,” he said.
The Third Judicial District has had a district-wide budget of $12.2 million every year since 2005, Ellefson said, and that budget should have technically increased for things such as inflation or salary increases, but it didn’t.
The state Judicial Council controls budgets for all 10 of the state’s judicial districts and allocates money based on need, but the Third District just wasn’t needy enough and now doesn’t have enough money to support just personnel and operations costs, Ellefson said.
The budgetary woes have been known for years, but the future state budget and the current planning session could just “exacerbate the problem,” she said.
The budget also estimates the cost of mandated services including interpreters, psychological evaluations and jury expenses.
In recent years, the overall cost of those services has skyrocketed. There are few interpreters to go around, and there were 37,735 court events in Minnesota that required an interpreter, said John Kostouros, communications director for the state Court Administrator’s Office. Indefinite civil commitments of psychosexual offenders are also on the rise.
MacLean said there are about five or six of those commitments in Winona County each year, up from one or two just a few years ago. Kostouros said each commitment requires at least two psychological evaluations each costing about $13,000. Winona County Judge Jeff Thompson said after those evaluations, a trial must be held because the sentence is basically “hospitalization for life.”
He said the state was about $3.8 million over budget for mandated services this year. With those costs going up and the budget remaining stagnant, the district “started in the hole,” Thompson said. The effect on local courthouses is clear.
“There are a lot of inefficiencies created by insufficient resources,” he said.
An example of those inefficiencies was more than apparent at the sentencing hearing for home invasion suspect Kirk Cordell Glann. Glann’s family was driving to Winona from Iowa to see the hearing and meet with Glann before he was sentenced to prison Jan. 30. His parents are hearing impaired, and a sign language interpreter was called from Minneapolis.
Bad weather during the day prevented the Glann family from completing their trek but the message didn’t reach the court until Glann’s hearing was set to begin at 3 p.m. After a few minutes passed, the interpreter showed up in the courtroom, but the judge said her services weren’t required anymore. Without a word, the interpreter turned around and left. Her 230-mile roundtrip from Minneapolis cost the court between $250 and $300 just for her travel time, according to Minnesota Court Interpreter Program payment policies.
To ease some of the pain included in this year’s budget, the Judicial Council submitted a $1.9 million budget supplemental request to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Kostouros said. The Legislature will decide in the coming months whether the money will be granted to help cover costs for interpreters, psychological evaluations and jury expenses, he said.
But even with that extra supplement, the district must cut jobs and public services.
“This is the best-case scenario,” Thompson said. “It’s kind of grim.”
If the supplement is denied, the district is looking at severe, “draconian results,” he said.
Feeling the pinch
The Winona County District Courthouse has already begun “counting staples and paper clips,” and specific cuts are expected to begin March 1, Thompson said.
The most visible cutback will be the closing of the public service window on Wednesdays until 12:30 p.m., he said. It doesn’t sound like much, but that cuts 4½ hours out of the week when someone can request a restraining order, pay a fine or apply for a public defender.
“We’ve prided ourselves on being timely and efficient,” Ellefson said. “We won’t be able to deliver services like we have in the past.”
Besides delays at the service window, timing and scheduling of actual court proceedings will be significantly slowed by a number of factors.
The Third Judicial District uses a weighted caseload to determine how many judges are required in each county. Based on the number and types of cases and the average time it takes to hear them, Winona County needs at least three judges. That’s fine for now, but Judge Margaret Shaw Johnson will be retiring in May, leaving the county short-handed, and Thompson will soon travel to Olmsted County every other week for assistance because it is short one judge already.
Applications to fill Johnson’s vacancy, as well as Judge James E. Broberg’s in Freeborn County, are being accepted until March 5. Regardless of budget issues, based on the typical flow of judge appointments, new judges likely won’t begin work until late spring, said John Hultquist, the state’s judicial appointments coordinator.
All that judge shuffling will leave less allocated time for them to hear emergency hearings like divorces, restraining orders and property disputes. Since those hearings take preference over nonemergency cases such as civil disputes and criminal proceedings, the latter will be pushed further along the calendar, stretching their processes out.
MacLean complained those cases already take too long. He said it could take more than a year to prosecute some of the higher-profile or violent cases and someone looking to get a reduction in bail might have to sit in jail for up to two weeks, waiting for a hearing date.
Those delays can’t be pegged on the courts alone, though. There are simply more cases coming in.
According to the Winona County Attorney’s Office annual report, in the last two years, 985 new felony cases were filed. In 2004 and 2005, 708 were filed. MacLean attributed the increases to Winona’s drug trade producing more crimes, more violent crime like the five home invasions last spring and increased investigation efforts like last fall’s Operation Watchful Neighborhoods.
While filing more charges helps public safety by getting criminals off the streets, it puts added strain on the courts. And with fewer judges and less staff helping out, things will be slowing down, Thompson said.
“The people who rely on the courts probably think we’re slow enough already,” he said. “It’s not pretty.”
More direct effects to the general public include using phone trees, less time for small claims court and no weddings during court hours. Winona County Court Administrator Sally Cumiskey said she will no longer perform marriage ceremonies during regular hours. Couples will either have to arrange something to be done after-hours or find other means.
Finally, the public will be exposed to potential jury duty for twice as long. Currently, as trial dates approach, the court develops a pool of potential jurors to be called in to hear cases. That pool changes every two months, but with the budget cuts, that cycle could increase to a four-month span, essentially doubling the chances of being called to serve, Thompson said.
What can be done?
With the state deficit leaping up to as much as $1 billion, the outlook for the entire state is grim.
“Frankly, there’s no way to ease those concerns,” state Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, said. “There’s no assistance coming.”
With every budget committee in the state being asked to work around potential cuts in funding, there isn’t enough money to go around to help ailing agencies. Both Pelowski and state Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, DFL-Winona, blamed the current shortfall on Pawlenty’s earlier approach to fixing budget deficits — “no new taxes” and internal tinkering.
Because the entire state is facing a looming deficit, even without making cuts, all state departments are facing budgetary shortages including Veterans Affairs, the Health Department, the judiciary and the Department of Transportation, Ropes said.
“We’re hoping they can hang by their fingernails for the next year or so without cuts,” Ropes said.
Citing Pawlenty’s “no new tax” pledge, she said, “The needs of Minnesota are being ignored.”
Alex Carey, spokesperson for Pawlenty in greater Minnesota, said problems relating to the judicial budget shortfall and public safety would not be ignored and would cause concern. The governor’s proposed budget would address “the most pressing issues” for the current state budget forecast but details on those issues would not be available until the budget is formally announced, he said.
Historically, the judicial branch hasn’t gotten much help.
In 2003, the Judicial Council was forced to slash the state judicial budget by about $16 million, Pelowski said. To make up for the loss, court filing fees and fines were increased. The result was $250 for restraining orders, even though the fee can sometimes be waived, Cumiskey said. Adoption forms cost $325 and divorces go for $330. On the criminal side, a $77 surcharge is automatically applied to each case filed. Some counties already impose those surcharges per criminal count MacLean said.
But Pelowski said all that extra money never really made it to the court system. Instead, it was funneled into the state’s general revenue fund. Nonetheless, rumors of raising those fees as a way to boost revenue have circulated.
Pelowski said that even if the Legislature passed a bill specifically raising those fees to help the courts, Pawlenty likely wouldn’t sign it.
“He would probably see it as a tax increase,” he said.
When asked if Pawlenty might support such increases, Carey said the state “can’t react to a hypothetical situation or forecast a response to a hypothetical situation” because cuts to state departments haven’t happened yet. He said the governor would react accordingly to concerns for public safety and public access as they are brought to his attention.
Thompson said the situation is demoralizing for employees in Winona County who have put in many years of hard work.
Ellefson said she wasn’t sure if an upturn in fortunes was coming in her district’s future. She said it all depends on the coming weeks of the legislative session and whether the supplemental budget is approved. Until then, the district will just have to adjust to the lack of funding.
“We don’t like it,” she said, “but we don’t have a choice.”
Thompson, who has dedicated his career to the Minnesota judicial system as a prosecutor for many years and a judge for the last nine, said he fears without change, it won’t work much longer. He was afraid things could get much worse.
“I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “I’m not very optimistic.”
Contact Kevin Behr at (507) 453-3524 or at kbehr@winonadailynews.com.
