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Judicial branch seeks to convert drug courts and pretrial programs from OTO to base funding
Summary
Committee heard requests to shift drug courts and pretrial programs from one-time (OTO) funding to base general fund and asked for county-level expenditure breakdowns and program detail.
Judicial-branch officials asked the subcommittee to permanently fund drug courts and the statewide pretrial program that previously were supported largely by federal grants or one-time appropriations.
Finance director Kathy Penny told members DP107 seeks additional spending authority to spend fees collected in a state special account established for drug-court activities; DP103 asks to move the pretrial program into the base and add 2.5 FTE. Penny and court-administration staff said the pretrial positions are not new: they were funded OTO since 2017 and the request would convert those OTO positions into the base (permanent) funding.
Committee members sought more granular history and county-level detail. Committee staff and the court administrators said pretrial coverage currently includes Lewis and Clark, Butte-Silver Bow, Lake, Missoula and Yellowstone counties, with pilot work in Cascade and Big Horn counties. The court administrator said pretrial funding covers personnel (risk-assessment coordinators and assistants) and non-personnel monitoring such as testing and electronic monitoring; staff offered to provide county-level breakdowns for the last three fiscal years and a written personnel-and-services breakdown for each county.
On drug courts, staff explained that some courts were shifted from federal-grant funding to the Department of Justice’s consumer education and settlement account; DP107 would increase authority to spend fees currently collected for treatment-court purposes and DP102 would transition some drug-court funding to general fund because the opioid-settlement sources are nearly exhausted. Staff said DP102’s general-fund increase annualizes around $37,000 in additional costs while state-special authority declines accordingly to consolidate funding.
