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Committee restores expungement pass-through, funds specialty courts and orders court-reporter pay review
Summary
The House Committee on General Government Budget voted to maintain a $200,000 expungement pass-through for FY2026, reduced a credit-monitoring reappropriation for FY2025 to $250,000, and approved $1.5 million to start specialty courts funding plus a 5% raise for court reporters to be priced later.
The Committee on General Government Budget took several funding actions for the judicial branch during its budget review, restoring an expungement pass-through, reducing a reappropriation for credit monitoring and approving initial funding for specialty courts and a 5% pay increase for court reporters.
Representative Turk moved to keep a $200,000 pass-through for an expungement grant for fiscal year 2026; Representative Melton seconded the motion and the committee approved it by voice vote. "When they came to us last year, they had no idea how many people were going to request credit monitoring. Now that we had a year pass, they know harder numbers..." Turk said while urging continued support for expungement work.
On the question of reappropriations tied to credit-monitoring after a judicial cybersecurity breach, committee members debated the originally reappropriated $840,853. Representative Turk proposed reducing that reappropriation to $250,000 for FY2025 on the grounds that enrollment and claims had been lower than initially projected; the motion passed (committee recorded two nays and the rest ayes). Legislative research staff confirmed the reduction and advised the committee on enrollment timing.
For fiscal year 2026, the committee approved a proposal to begin funding specialty courts with $1.5 million as an initial allocation and directed a 5% increase in salaries for court reporters only; members said they expect further appropriations work in the next-stage appropriations process to set exact dollar amounts. The 5% figure was left as a percentage to be priced in later staff calculations.
Committee discussion also covered judicial IT and cybersecurity requests tied to the aftermath of a statewide cybersecurity incident. The committee added funding for several IT and cybersecurity items and reiterated the need to coordinate with appropriations on larger, ongoing IT requests.
The committee's votes were procedural budget actions taken at the committee level; any final appropriations and provisos will be resolved at the full appropriations stage.
