EDITORIAL

The Judicial Branch’s Budget Must Be Independent

For years many lawyers assumed the budget of the Judicial Branch was independent of the Executive and Legislative Branches, and was simply submitted through the Governor’s office to the General Assembly. Sadly, such is not the case, and Judge Ment’s efforts in 1997 to pass legislation to give the Judicial Branch budgetary independence fell on deaf ears.

In February of this year Judge Ment, our Chief Court Administrator, proposed that the Judicial Branch’s operating budget request go directly to the legislature unchanged, rather than through the Governor with changes made by the Governor. There were some minor exceptions to his proposal. The draft legislation sought to amend §4-73 of the General Statutes to provide:

The obvious purpose of the proposal was to provide that the appropriations recommended by the Judicial Branch be the recommended appropriations in the Governor’s budget. The present procedure, a surprise to many experienced practitioners, is that the Judicial Branch’s budget goes through the Executive Branch, and in its journey through the Governor’s office it is tinkered with, and frequently eviscerated.

If we have a constitutionally separate Judicial Branch as an arm of the state government, it makes no sense to treat this constitutionally separate branch as a department of the Executive, which appears to be the current practice. The Judicial Branch should have the same autonomy enjoyed by the Legislative Branch’s independent budget. That would have happened if the proposed legislation had become law.

Thirty-four states, including Connecticut’s neighbors, let their judicial branches submit their budgets directly to the legislature. The General Assembly obviously has the final say on the Judicial Branch’s bottom line, as it does on the Executive’s bottom line. The Governor can still make recommendations to the legislature about the Judicial Branch’s budget. The only difference would be that the Judicial Branch’s budget could not be changed by the Governor when he puts together his proposed budget to present to the legislature.

Judge Ment has publicly expressed his concern that the substantial cuts in the Judicial Branch’s 1997-1999 budget request ordered by the Governor’s office will not allow the Judicial Branch to meet its considerable responsibilities. He has claimed that the Governor’s cuts have underfunded the Judicial Branch’s programs and services more than any previous cuts in his twelve years as Chief Court Administrator.

The Governor successfully opposed Judge Ment’s proposed legislation. The Governor’s office, at the time of the controversy, made a public statement that the Judicial Branch’s budget "consumes a large part of the state budget" and has to "get leaner." This is wrong. Not counting the budgets for the quasi-judicial activities excepted in the proposed legislation, the Judicial Branch’s budget amounts to 1.75 percent of the overall budget.

The Hartford Courant, in its editorial on March 5, 1997, pointed this out and concluded:

We support Judge Ment 100 percent in his effort to amend §4-73 of the General Statutes. Serious underfunding of the Judicial Branch has been a problem for several years. We don’t even have a full time clerk’s office, let alone adequate personnel, equipment and facilities for our civil and criminal justice system.

We have long advocated the appointment by the Chief Justice of a blue ribbon task force of lawyers and judges to study the current problems and recommend changes to the justice system for the 21st Century. Its first recommendation must be budgetary independence for the Judicial Branch, which is fundamental to the principle of separation of powers.