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:

• 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.
• Negotiated 0% merit and ATB increases for FY10-11
• 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.

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: The Supreme Court recently promulgated new Rules permitted expanded use of ITV in criminal matters.  It is anticipated that this will reduce costs for justice partners.

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.