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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Ind. Gov't. - Requests from courts are "just one more area that is going to be hard to address during this upcoming long and difficult budget time"

Kathy Kreag Richardson, State Representative District 29, has a column dated August 28th in The Times ("serving Noblesville and Hamilton County"), titled "My time on the Commission on Courts." Some quotes:

As I drove down to the Statehouse last week for one of my summer study committee meetings, knowing that our agenda was going to deal with counties requesting additional court officials, I realized this is just one more area that is going to be hard to address during this upcoming long and difficult budget time.

The Commission is made up of House and Senate Members, Chief Justice Randall Shepard, a County Judge, Circuit Court Clerk, County Commissioner and Council member. It is a Commission I have been honored to serve on, and I have witnessed many issues during my time as a member, both as a clerk and then as a representative.

The main purpose of the Commission on Courts is to review and recommend which additional court officials are needed for counties. These could be new courts, judges or magistrates.

Over the years the State Court Administration has provided us with various statistics to assist in our decision making, but generally it is a matter of county judges coming and pleading their case for the needs of their county.

You see, the state pays the salary and benefits of the judges and the magistrates, so these positions must be created and passed by the legislature. County Commissioners are responsible for providing the facilities, and County Councils fund the actual operations, staff and benefits.

The state receives many of the fees collected to use toward the payment of the salaries and your property taxes goes to pay for the local share of the expenses.

At our meeting we reviewed requests from Johnson, Bartholomew, Allen and Hamilton County. Frankly, as we listen to their presentations, all of us on the committee knew that no matter how great the need, the revenue is not there for any additional court officers at this time.

The difficult part of all of this is that in a time when the economy is down and unemployment is high, the court filings seem to go up-whether it is foreclosures, crime, or divorces.

So the needs of the court become greater when the economy is down, but when the economy is down, the resources are just not there to fund new courts. * * *

The next (and final) meeting for the Commission on Courts is September 23, when we will make final decisions on the issues before us. As we did last year, if a court convinces us of their need, we will make a recommendation that they be approved if funding was available.

At the very least, this will put a county in need at the head of the list, should funds become available.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 31, 2010 09:56 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts | Indiana Government