Why not cut court administration more?
While cutting “administration” is a great sound bite, cutting administration would shift work and create problems elsewhere in the court system. The primary role of court administration is to serve the judiciary by handling administrative matters so judges can devote their time to cases. Taking a hatchet to court administration would ultimately shift more work to judges, leaving them less time for judicial duties. Moreover, court administration represents a small fractiononly 3%of the entire judicial branch budget, so cuts in this component would reduce expenses by a nominal amount. Nonetheless, the judicial branch has reduced its administrative staff. Among other things, the judicial branch recently reduced and realigned its finance and personnel component and is holding a number of administrative positions vacant. Why not freeze the salaries of court employees and judges as a way to reduce overhead? With regard to judges, the legislature did not raise judges’ salaries this year and w
