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. The presenters noted that last year the legislature provided roughly $750,000 in contingent one-time funding.

The judiciary also identified two ongoing pressures it expects in coming years: technology-revenue replacement and security services cost-of-living adjustments. The security-related adjustment was estimated at about $200,000 for the coming year, described as roughly a 3.7% increase for contract security and sheriff services that are not salaried state employees.

Officials broke down the current budget by category: about 71% goes to salary and benefits; fee-for-space (state courthouse occupancy charges) is about 8%; contracted security is 6%; the IT budget is about 4.7%; and other judicial programs and operating expenses make up roughly 8.8%. The presenters said the general fund provides about 92.5% of the judiciary’s revenue.

Court operations data were also discussed. Judiciary staff said the governor-appointed four judges took the bench Feb. 10, bringing the court system to full judicial staffing. The statewide clearance rate—the percentage of cases disposed compared with incoming filings—was reported at 106% for the most recent annual data and had risen to about 108% as of the most recent weekly report, officials said. New filings statewide were described as about 40,000 per year; the Judicial Bureau handles roughly another 40,000 administrative/summary filings that the presenters said are counted separately.

Marcia Schells described recent technology changes as improved reliability, redundancy and performance after the judiciary separated its network from an enterprise provider. “We have redundancy that we didn’t have before,” Schells said, and reported improved uptime and fewer performance problems since implementation of the independent network.

Committee members discussed broader policy questions tied to special funds and fee-supported programs. Representative Linguish and Senator Lumley commented that a pattern is emerging across state agencies in which special funds and fee revenue no longer sustain programs originally financed that way. Senator Lumley and others raised the option of moving recurring program costs to the general fund to make funding more predictable. Representative Casasco noted that some fees were established as behavioral incentives and that periodic reviews are needed to confirm fees still align with their statutory purpose.

Officials also listed federal and indirect federal funding streams. The judiciary reported roughly $1,500,000 in annual federal grant funding (primarily for treatment courts) and about $2,000,000 in indirect federal funds—mainly Title IV-D child-support payments routed through other agencies—bringing total federal-related dollars to about $3,900,000 that could be affected by federal funding changes.

The presenters described several operational consequences of declining civil-fee collections: rising accounts receivable, growing uncollectible debt from very old tickets, and pressure on the technology fund that previously relied on those revenues. They said collection changes stem in part from policy changes that allow license reinstatement without payment of underlying fines. Committee members expressed concern about the cumulative and cross-agency effects of such policies on special funds, local government matching funds and agency operations.

No formal committee vote was recorded during the presentation. Judiciary staff said they were asking that the legislature consider covering the technology shortfall through the general fund or finalize the BAA request to reduce the requested general-fund increase. The presenters also offered to return with additional information and suggested the committee track this theme in future meetings.

Ending

Committee members asked staff to compile themes and a list of fee-supported funds that are underperforming so the committee can consider whether broader policy or statutory changes are needed. Judiciary officials said they will provide details about the BAA, one-time funding used last year, and the specific components of the tech shortfall as the budget process continues.