BENNINGTON -- A committee tasked with finding savings within the state's Judiciary approved a draft report Friday outlining $2.4 million in savings for property taxpayers and the state's general fund.
The report calls for some major changes, including reducing the number of Probate courts from 14 to five, and stripping assistant judges of their judicial functions. Both suggestions got an immediate chilly reception from a key state senator.
"I am extremely concerned about the direction that the commission seems to be going," Sen. Dick Sears, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday. "I see it as an attack on two of the systems that we've had for years."
$2.4M in proposed cuts
The Vermont Commission on Judicial Operations was charged by the Legislature in 2008 with finding ways to consolidate the court system, deliver services more efficiently and save at least $1 million. The report identifies ways to cut $1.2 million from the state's general fund and an additional $1.2 million from county budgets raised through municipal property taxes.
The commission reached several conclusions using 44 focus groups and a survey with more than 800 responses. Among the findings:
* The current four-courts-per-county setup is duplicative, overly expensive and inefficient;
* Without restructuring, the courts hit hardest by future budget cuts will be Family and
* The system needs to be reconfigured to eliminate redundancies in management and procedures and to improve access to justice;
* The introduction of new available technologies will allow the Judiciary to improve judicial services and increase access to services while implementing efficiencies to reduce costs.
The commission found significant issues with existing Probate Courts and assistant judges. In addition to reducing the number of probate courts, the number of probate judges would be reduced from 17 to five. And those five probate judges would need to be lawyers, a requirement that does not currently exist.
According to the commission, the use of assistant judges -- elected positions in each county -- to preside over small claims and traffic cases results in a "two-tiered justice system." Those cases are most likely to involve self-represented, or pro se litigants, and are most often heard by non-law-trained judges, the report said.
The "use of lay judges to preside over certain types of cases is inconsistent with the principle that all judges in a modern judicial system should be law-trained," the report states.
Colvin opposed
Under the commission's plan, assistant judges would no longer perform judicial functions, but would retain their county duties, such as maintaining county budgets and overseeing county sheriffs.
James Colvin, a Bennington County assistant judge and president of the County Judges Association, said the association does not agree with the commission's findings concerning assistant judges. He said many of the functions they perform save the state money because they are not trial judges.
Colvin said assistant judges, also known as side judges, are closest to the people in the Judiciary. "We're elected judges. We're not appointed. We're really the people's voices in the judiciary," he said.
Colvin said the commission's report implies that assistant judges are not trained. Most are not lawyers, he said, but do take legal classes and go through training. The association plans to work with lawmakers to defeat some of the measures in the report, he said.
"The ultimate decision is going to be made by the Legislature. We are a creation of the Legislature, and they give us the powers and authority that we have and they can rearrange that as they see fit," he said. "We anticipate giving testimony to the Legislature when the time comes."
Sears said his view of the report is "not extremely positive at the moment" because of the recommendations that deal with probate courts and assistant judges. However, other recommendations warrant further review, he said, such as creating a unified court system. Currently, District and Family courts are overseen by the Vermont state Supreme Court while Superior and Probate courts are managed by counties.
The report made several recommendations concerning reorganization, including:
* Creating a single Superior Court with four divisions -- Civil, Criminal, Family and Probate -- in each of Vermont's counties. Each Superior Court would have a court manager and a presiding judge. The courts would be administered by the Supreme Court.
* Have all Judiciary employees be state employees, rather than county employees, and paid according to the same pay scale with the same benefits.
"I'm willing to look at that kind of reorganization," Sears said.
Any changes to the Judiciary are likely to be looked at by the Government Operations Committees in the Legislature. Sears said he also wants his committee to have a chance to review the plans.
Contact Neal P. Goswami at ngoswami@benningtonbanner.com
Font Resize
| 