Iowa Chief Justice Marsha Ternus — the state’s first female chief justice — delivered the 2009 State of the Judiciary address to the Iowa Legislature this morning.
In her two previous addresses before lawmakers, Ternus has successfully pressed for more help with juvenile courts and juvenile offenders. While continuing to refer to work with troubled juveniles as “some of the courts’ most important work,” Ternus clearly had budget cuts and, more importantly, the impact of such cuts on the judiciary as her primary focus.
“We will do our part to help you reduce the State’s operating expenses. Honestly, though, our options for cost cutting are quite limited,” Ternus said. “Our resources are spread painfully thin due to the lasting and cumulative effects of the budget cuts in the first part of this decade. Many cost-saving measures we adopted then are still in place today. Because labor costs constitute 96 percent of our operating budget, it is impossible to significantly reduce our expenses without cutting personnel. Depending on the size of the cut you impose on the judicial branch, in all likelihood we will have to institute furloughs to reduce expenses this fiscal year.”
Although such furloughs, according to Ternus, would have the least amount of impact on the general public, they would have the most impact on the state’s most vulnerable consumers of the court system — women, children and the poor. For instance, the gaps in service could result in forwarded child support payments being delayed.
Prior to the state budget crisis, it is quite likely that Ternus would have renewed her call for additional support in the juvenile justice system and other support systems for the state’s poor. The judicial branch had requested, before revisions and cuts, an overall increase of $2.9 million. The monies would have been used in part to hire two new juvenile court officers, seven new information technology staffers, an education specialist and nearly 20 new support staff. The judicial branch was also hoping to institute training programs for existing staff and expand interpreter services, especially in civil cases.
Although the full text of the speech is available on the Iowa Courts Web site, it is a PDF file. Since some of our readers have expressed their inability to open and view some PDFs, we have reproduced the speech on this blog. Just take the jump below to read Ternus prepared remarks.
