State court administrator defends judicial budget, offers retrospective spending detail and updates on statewide case system

Tom Boyd, administrator of the State Court Administrative Office (SCAO), told the Michigan House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary on the meeting record that the Michigan Supreme Court controls how appropriations for the judicial branch are organized and spent and offered to provide the committee with retrospective, line-level spending details for fiscal year 2024 and the current fiscal year.

Boyd said the committee had asked specifically about two line items — an SCAO line (approximately $14,500,000) and a Michigan Supreme Court administration line (approximately $16,500,000) — and that most of the money in those lines pays staff whose authority derives from Article VI of the Michigan Constitution. "The money that we're talking about today in the SCAO line and the Michigan Supreme Court Administration line, it's almost all human resources, and it's spent on the people that are hired because of that sentence," Boyd said.

The administrator framed the budget question by citing the constitution, noting Article VI gives the Supreme Court "general supervision of its staff" and authority to control preparation of the court's budget recommendation. Boyd said that, because the court may reorganize internally (for example, moving offices or reassigning functions under a new chief justice), predicting future spending allocations is harder than reporting past expenditures. "What we did in the first 6 months of this session, what we did last year, I hope that that informs what you're trying to figure out," Boyd said.

Why it matters: Lawmakers on the committee pressed for more transparency because the two lines together total about $30 million and look to some members like a broad "administration" category.…