Courts must share in the fiscal pain but can still modernize, Judicial Council hears

The courts aren't giving up on modernization efforts despite grim budget news, Administrative Director Martin Hoshino told the Judicial Council at its virtual meeting on Friday.

The courts are facing about a $255 million shortfall over the next two years, he said. One goal is to find a "fair and equitable" way to share the pain.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced $283.3 million in proposed cuts to the judicial branch during his annual May budget press conference on Thursday.

Hoshino noted one item that made it through the budget-slashing gauntlet was $25 million in funding for court modernization. There is widespread agreement that making it easier for people to access court services remotely helps fight the spread of the virus while also addressing key branch goals like better serving low-income people, he said.

There is also the matter of dealing with costs the virus has directly imposed on the court system. For instance, the budget includes $50 million to help the courts deal with a huge backlog of tasks as they reopen. The branch is also planning to spend millions of dollars on installing plexiglass barriers and other physical means of interrupting the spread of the virus inside courthouses. But the administration is still in the process of publishing spreadsheets on the various state departments, often running to dozens of pages showing the use of each dollar and position within a department. These would show precisely where the cuts and the loss of 15 judicial positions proposed by Newsom would come from.

The council's Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee will meet this Thursday to dig further into the numbers. The meeting will take on some of the modernization proposals and also look at the workload funding formula, the complex and controversial means for allocating judges and other resources to the different county courts.

That committee's chair, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jonathan B. Conklin, told the council members on Friday the budget problems are "significant ... but I do not believe they are insurmountable" and reminded them the branch already successfully navigated another recent financial crisis.

Hoshino also noted the budget proposals are, so far, just proposals. They have to be passed with the cooperation of the Legislature. But he added that they'll be working blind to some degree, due to tax deadlines being delayed from April 15 until July 15. This is well after the June 15 deadline to deliver a budget. There is also the issue of federal help to the states, which could potentially back-fill budgets and reduce the need for cuts.

In a budget summary from the Newsom administration, the governor's office stated, "The COVID-19 pandemic has required the judicial branch to reevaluate processes, and like state government, the judicial branch should use this crisis as an opportunity to make more convenient and efficient court operations."

The state Department of Finance had projected a $5.6 billion surplus when Newsom presented his first draft of the budget in January. The agency came back with a projection of a $54.3 billion shortfall after state and local economies largely shut down as a result of Newsom's orders to implement social distancing to fight the virus.