State Courts and the Budget Crisis: Rethinking Court Services

The Council of State Governments 289 Introduction The current fiscal crisis is provoking budget reductions so deep they threaten the basic mission of state courts. Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret Marshall recently described the state courts, which handle 95 percent of all criminal and civil litigation in the country, as poised at “the tipping point of dysfunction.”1 In the 2010 fiscal year, 40 state court budgets were cut, and for the 2011 fiscal year, 48 project budget cuts. The cumulative cuts have reached as high as 20 percent of the court budget, and for many state courts, the end is not in sight. The scale of the problem is enormous. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, overall state budget deficits for the 2010 fiscal year total $194 billion or 28 percent of state budgets—the largest gaps on record. Additional 2011 fiscal year gaps total $102 billion or 17 percent of budgets for the 41 states with budget gap estimates. These totals are likely to grow as state revenues continue to deteriorate, and may well exceed $180 billion.2 In addition to the macroeconomic factors driving the current recession, a growing demographic challenge is expected to persist for the next 15 years: fewer younger workers subsidizing through their taxes the retirements and social services of a large number of older workers. Put another way, income tax and payroll tax revenues are declining while social services and especially health care costs are escalating. State courts are funded in a variety of ways— either entirely through state budgets, through a combination of state and local funding, or entirely through local funding. For the 18 state court systems that are predominantly state-funded, the judicial branch budget represents only 2 to 4 percent of the state budget, most of which is devoted to personnel costs. Court budgets do not contain State Courts and the Budget Crisis: Rethinking Court Services By Richard Y. Schauffler and Matthew Kleiman