Judiciary asks appropriations committee to cover shrinking tech fund, cites falling fine revenues

Judiciary officials told a legislative appropriations committee that their fiscal year 2026 budget request centers on replacing revenue lost to a declining court technology fund and covering rising information-technology costs.

The presenters said the office’s baseline FY25 budget is about $63,000,000 and that the Governor’s recommended package reflects roughly $9,000,000 in additions when a pending budget-adjustment request is included. The largest single pressure is technology funding: the judiciary’s court-technology fund has shrunk over multiple years and no longer covers growing IT costs, officials said.

In a presentation, the judiciary’s finance manager, Kelly Carbo, and the court technology lead, Marcia Schells, explained the shortfall and how it is being handled. “Money comes from fees on top of civil violations,” the presenter said of the technology fund, describing it as a mix of an administrative fee, a late fee and a failure-to-pay fee. The presenters said those fees have fallen from about $1,600,000 a year several years ago to roughly $750,000 now.

The department described a multi-year funding gap of about $3,400,000 for the tech fund. A budget-adjustment appropriation (BAA) in the legislature was described as proposing about $2,100,000; if that BAA passes, officials said the remaining new general-fund need for FY26 would be about $1,300,000.…