Missouri state budget includes ups, downs for judiciary

Missouri’s courts received both a raise and a pay cut in next year’s state budget.

The state judiciary is set to receive just under $195 million in fiscal year 2013, which begins July 1. That’s an increase of more than $4 million over the current budget.

Yet the increase is half of what it otherwise might have been. Lawmakers also cut the court’s budget by $4 million as well — and did so in a way that will mean that some staff vacancies at courts across the state will never be filled.

In essence, lawmakers gave the courts $8 million worth of pay raises while simultaneously cutting $4 million worth of potential workers.

“We’re going to have to make a determination about how many of those positions are just off the table permanently,” said Greg Linhares, the state courts administrator.

For the past few years, the court system has been allowed to voluntarily return some of its money — “withhold” it, in budget-speak. Such withholds are essentially budget cuts that last only one year, at least in theory. For instance, the courts’ current budget is about $190.8 million on paper, but $5.6 million of that was withheld.

Because most of the courts’ budget goes to personnel, the withholdings have largely been met by declining to hire new workers when others leave or retire. That let the courts hold out hope that, if revenues improved, those positions could be filled someday.

Permanent cuts

That hope now has been partially dashed. As state revenues continue to lag, lawmakers this year chose to make some cuts permanent. Although the $4 million cut to the courts’ “core” budget next year is smaller than the amount withheld from this year’s budget, the change in policy will have a big effect on how the court spends its money.

“The upside is you have potentially extra dollars,” Linhares said. “The downside is, the dollars that are gone are gone permanently.”

He said the exact way those cuts are achieved will be up to the courts’ internal budget committees to decide.

The net increase to the courts’ budget comes from higher salaries for state employees. After some tense wrangling last week, the House and the Senate agreed to give 2 percent pay hikes to all state workers who earn less than $70,000 annually. (The Senate had pushed for a cut-off of $45,000.) Judges are not included in that pay package, but a separate pay hike for the judiciary that was passed last year goes into effect July 1 as well.

Although lawmakers cut a portion of the courts’ budget, they also restructured it to give the courts more control of what money they did get. Previous budgets have listed each element of the courts’ operations on a separate line, essentially forcing the courts to spend money in a particular way.

Now the budget lists the courts’ operations in a few broad categories and gives them authority to move around some funding — something the Legislature itself is allowed to do.

Rep. Ryan Silvey, R- Kansas City, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, had initially sought to give the courts even more flexibility, while the Senate stuck to the traditional method.

“I think it’s a good compromise,” Silvey said Thursday. “I still think we should eventually give them the exact same treatment that we give ourselves.”

The full $24 billion budget now goes to Gov. Jay Nixon, who can veto particular appropriations or withhold money from programs if expenditures will exceed state revenues.

The budget bill is HB2012.