The Courts

STATE OF THE JUDICIAL BRANCH
Due to several biennia of underfunding the Judicial Branch faces significant fiscal challenges. We are aggressively employing strategies to contain costs:

• Negotiated 0% merit and ATB increases for FY10-11
• Instituted hiring freeze, voluntary separation program and leave without pay, layoffs, voluntary furloughs—now operating nearly 10% short staffed—delays in case processing are building.
• Public counters in over half of the districts are closed up to 1/2 day per week. In the 8th District all employees have taken reduction in work hours (40 to 37.5) which is a 6.25% reduction in compensation.
• Holding open all judicial vacancies for minimum of four months. Cut retired judge funding, mandated services budgets, and operating budgets.
• Cancelled most judicial and staff educational conferences.
• Applied for $ 3.9 federal stimulus funding for drug courts—We were unsuccessful in this effort. The future of many of the drug courts is in doubt.

IMPACT OF GOVERNOR’S PROPOSED $14.7M BUDGET REDUCTION
Minnesota courts are responsible for a core function of government – providing justice to the citizens of this state. Article I, section 1 of the Minnesota State Constitution says that the object of government is to provide ?for the security, benefit and protection of the people.? Article 1, section 6 provides that in all criminal prosecutions, ?the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial? and Article I, section 8 provides that in civil cases, every person is entitled to a certain remedy, ?promptly and without delay, conformable to the laws.? These basic rights, guaranteed by the constitution, are at serious risk as a result of past and proposed cuts to the budget of the Minnesota Justice system. With no discretionary programs to cut and a budget dedicated solely to adjudicating cases, reducing the courts budget by $14.7M can only be done by delaying justice to Minnesota citizens. Backlogs and delays will grow. Nearly 25% of serious felony cases take longer than one year to dispose. Delays in scheduling hearings and trials have more than doubled in many locations. More drug courts will have to close. Nearly 100 positions will be lost. On top of earlier staff reductions, that means the Judi-cial Branch will operate 13% short staffed. Closures of public counters will increase. Hundreds of low income Minnesotans will be denied legal representation in civil matters. Planned technology investments to reduce future operating costs will be jeopardized.

EFFICIENCY MEASURES
We are redoubling efforts to find court process efficiencies and to expand the use of technology to reduce costs, while continuing to provide Minnesotans with quality justice: Centralized Payables—Over the next two years we will roll out our Court Payment Center concept to 85 counties (excludes Hennepin and Ramsey) to handle the 1 million plus citations processed by the courts on an annual basis. A centralized court payment center will:

• enter all citations issued by local law enforcement into the case management system;
• operate a call center for questions;
• intake payments by mail, over the phone and over internet;
• automatically split payments between the governmental agencies; and
• automatically refer unpaid obligations to a collections vendor.

This effort will:

• Provide new and more efficient opportunities for the public to pay outstanding fines (Web payments and phone payments);
• Free up local court staff to concentrate efforts on high priority court work, such as case processing; and
• Increase collections, resulting in more revenue for municipal, county, and state government.

E-Citation—Allows traffic citations to be entered into squad car computers, transferred electronically to police and sheriff’s departments’ case systems, and sent directly into the court’s case management system, MNCIS . This effort will:

• Save time for law enforcement and court staff; and
• Increase accuracy for the law enforcement officer on the scene.

E-charging – The BCA is implementing and we are partnering with them, a system to enable county attorneys to file complaints electronically. Favorable results from a recent pilot project, along with $1 million in stimulus money, will enable us to move this capability out throughout the state
E-Filing – Hennepin and Ramsey counties are designing and will implement, in FY 11-12, an automated system which enables parties in civil cases to submit all documents electronically, again freeing up court staff from having to manually process the work.
Jury Management Improvements— The 87 separate jury management data bases and software have been centralized. When people are called for jury service they can now fill out their questionnaires on-line (paper response is also accepted). Frees up court staff time that had been used entering data from the questionnaires into the computer.
Centralized Conservator Annual Accounting Reports— We have begun to rollout a statewide on-line system for conservators to provide statutorily mandated annual reports and for courts to review the conservator accounts. The on-line system is anticipated to be more efficient for court staff and, more importantly, will create sufficient volume to warrant specialized staff to improve court oversight.
ITV Task Force— In the summer of 2009 the Chief Justice appointed an ITV Task Force to review current court rules relating to ITV and to make recommendations for expanded use to reduce cost for justice partners.
Criminal and Civil Justice Forums— We are meeting with criminal and civil justice partners to continue our search for more effective and cost efficient services.
Access and Service Delivery 2 Workgroup (ASD)— The ASD 2 Workgroup studied ways to re-engineer court op-erations and redesign court delivery systems. Recommendations are under consideration by the Judicial Council.

THE FUTURE

• The Judicial Branch has been aggressive in its efforts to provide effective services in a cost efficient manner.
• The measures we have taken are strong and are already causing strains on the system.
• We recognize that there are limitations on our ability to manage our way out of further cuts.
• Additional budget reductions will force the Branch to reassess our ability to process dozens of case types brought to the courts.
• We continue efforts internally and with Justice System partners to identify ways to provide effective and cost efficient services.
• We want to continue to partner with the Legislature to find mutually acceptable ways to continue to provide quality services to the citizens of this state.
• There is one thing we cannot economize: our core mission to provide justice through a system that assures equal access for the fair and timely resolution of cases and controversies.
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