Judicial branch seeks roughly $166 million, pay raises and 22 staff; senators trim some requests

The Appropriations - Education and Environment Division on Tuesday heard testimony on Senate Bill 2002 as the Judicial Branch requested $165,960,657.28 for the 2025 biennium, including pay increases for judges, 22 additional full‑time positions and a series of information‑technology and program investments.

The request, presented by State Court Administrator Sally Halava and Finance Director Don Wolf, would raise the branch’s budget by about $36.2 million over the 2023–25 base. Chief Justice John Jensen and multiple judges told the committee that the request is aimed chiefly at bringing judicial salaries closer to national averages and at addressing workload and retention pressures.

The Judicial Branch’s request and the Senate’s changes

Sally Halava, state court administrator, told the committee that salary and IT are the primary drivers of the request. She said the package includes a 3% grid adjustment for classified staff, a market adjustment to the court compensation grid, an explicit $2 million line for judicial officer increases and funding for 22 new FTEs (about $4.8 million). Halava said the branch’s total contains both recurring salary/benefit increases and one‑time IT and equipment items.

Chief Justice John Jensen framed the pay request by describing heavy workloads for district court judges, saying North Dakota’s district courts handle “somewhere between 340,000 cases a year” across 55 judges and that judges in the state cover a broad range of matters. “Our district court judges handle everything from traffic tickets on the criminal side all the way up to murder trials,” Jensen said. He and others said North Dakota judges’ pay trails neighboring states by roughly $10,000 (South Dakota) to $18,000 (Minnesota) and that the branch asked to bring compensation to roughly the national midpoint.

The…