When the legislature passed the biennial budget two weeks ago, it cut 1.8 million dollars earmarked for security at New Hampshire’s thirty-nine district courts. While lawmakers defend the cut as prudent fiscal policy, court officials say it could prove disastrous….not only for the 33 full-time workers who could lose their jobs……but also for the citizens they serve. NHPR’s Josh Rogers has more.
The new court security budget represents a 45 percent reduction. House Finance Chair Neal Kurk acknowledges that sounds drastic. But he assures that although the cut occurred in a session-ending committee of conference, the final numbers were not chosen in haste.
We looked at the kind of service we needed and felt that the way we had been doing it at the superior court level for fifteen years worked well, and we thought it would be appropriate to do it at the district court level.
The system Kurk finds “appropriate” makes superior court security the responsibility of county sheriffs departments. For shouldering that burden, the court pays sheriffs departments 65 dollars a day per worker. While there’s grumbling that the 65-dollar reimbursement rate is too low, there’s no outcry that it compromises security. But Judge Edwin Kelly, who oversees the district court system, says it’s simply wrong to assume such a scheme would necessarily work in the less centralized and often more hectic district court system. Kelly notes that in 2000 the district court handled nearly six times as many cases as did the superior courts.
Those numbers mean that court security is in addition to all the other things it does is involved in what amounts to crowd control…we’re talking about hundreds of people at a time in some of our larger courts and so the dynamic is entirely different.
Kelly says the district court dynamic also includes more incidents of violence. While the 1997 murder of a part-time Colebrook district court judge is by far the most egregious, court records indicate that in 2000 court security filed 107 incident reports, 103 of which occurred in district or probate courts. Don Goodnow director of the courts’ administrative office also notes that many of the smaller district courts lack metal detectors, making the cutbacks even more perilous.
It’s certainly unacceptable to conduct court if we are unable to provide adequate security. And this appropriation makes it very difficult for us to do that. So we are talking about either reduction in security or a significant reduction in the number of days the courts are in session.
Court officials are also talking about how to inform the 33 full time security officers now in their employ that if they want to continue working they will have to get by on $65 dollar a day with no benefits. House Finance Chairman Neal Kurk says he appreciates the service those workers have provided, but stresses the bottom line remains the bottom line.
Those folks are obviously performing a job and doing it quite well. However we have to balance the interest of the taxpayers. State government exists to provide services for the citizens. It’s not obviously a machine designed to provide jobs.
Kurk also dismisses the argument that the new budget has abruptly plunged the district courts into what Judge Kelly calls a “crisis situation.” Kurk says the judiciary has known for several years that lawmakers supported such cuts. After all, in 1998 a state law that required the courts replace full time security officers with sheriff’s bailiffs passed the legislature and was signed by Governor Shaheen. The Supreme Court then ruled the law unfairly trammeled on the Constitution’s separation of powers clause. Neal Kurk says achieving the same goal through the budget will make the policy immune to similar challenge this time around. Kurk also points out that lawmakers gave the courts more than enough time to put a new system in place by the July first start of the fiscal year.
They knew this was happening in April. We’ve gotten many letters from chief Justice Brock on the issue. Certainly they realized this was a possibility..And so they’ve had several months had they wanted to start planning for this. I can’t tell you why they didn’t do that.
Judge Edwin Kelly says at this point he’s less concerned with the politics of the situation than with reaching a satisfactory resolution.
We are working actively to find a solution I would hope we would have a response to this by the end of the month.
In this, the Judiciary enjoys Representative Kurk’s full vote of confidence.
Judges are clever people and I’m sure they will be able to think of ways that perhaps even the legislature hasn’t thought of to provide security and meet their needs on the money provided….I know it’s difficult for them but they will be able to do it there is enough money.
For now, the courts have yet to make any staffing changes, but court administrators say if they continue current operating practices they could run through their biennial security budget by January.
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