Last week, the Chief Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, Barbara Madsen, wrote an article in the News Tribune on the impact of budget cuts on the state’s judicial system.  She writes,

In a September 2010 survey on funding impacts, Pierce County courts reported cutting several weeks of jury trials. That resulted in a growing backlog of criminal cases, increases in case file delays and errors, a loss of advocates for children involved in court cases, reduction in staff and pro tem judge hours which added to case delays, significant increases in self-represented persons struggling through serious cases without attorneys, increased strains on public defenders, and more.

Many trial courts report budget cuts of more than 20 percent from 2009 funding levels, while state-level judicial branch funding (such as the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Office of Public Defense and other state judicial entities) has decreased more than 13 percent overall. One judicial agency has been cut more than 36 percent; another has been cut nearly 25 percent.

I can’t tell where these numbers come from.  In our recent policy brief on budget trends, we included a paragraph on the massive growth in the judicial budget area from 2003 to 2008 (near general fund-state):

FY 2003 through FY 2008 was a period of major budget expansion for the judicial branch, in which agency budgets increased a cumulative 79.9 percent. These include a 67.9 percent increase for the Administrative Office of the Courts and a 92.9 percent increase for the Office of Civil Legal Aid. The Office of Public Defense more than tripled its budget from $6.5 million to $27.0 million, receiving policy additions of $23.1 million for funding to counties for counsel to indigent parents in child dependency cases and $15.1 million to expand criminal indigent defense services. The Office of Civil Legal Aid had $8.7 million in enhancements to increase services.

In the following years, the judicial budget area has indeed been cut, but on a smaller scale.  From 2008 to 2013, the judicial branch is cut 7 percent.  Of judicial agencies, spending for the Administrative Office of the Courts is cut 9 percent, Office of Public Defense 7.6 percent, the Supreme Court 5.1 percent, the Court of Appeals 3.9 percent, the Commission on Judicial Conduct 0.1 percent, and the State Law Library 35.2 percent.  Spending for the Office of Civil Legal Aid actually increases 4 percent.