Kansas Supreme Court warns House cuts threaten court operations, asks Legislature to restore funding

Molly Pratt, fiscal analyst with the Legislative Research Department, told the Senate Ways and Means Committee the judicial branch budget summary is in volume 1 on page 96 and summarized the agency's request and the House substitute for House Bill 2007.

Pratt said the judicial branch was approved for about $223,000,000 in fiscal year 2025 and the agency's FY2026 request was approximately $251,100,000 before legislative adjustments. She described which enhancement requests were deleted by the interim Legislative Budget Committee and which items the House added back, including a partial state general fund transfer for specialty courts and several IT and software projects included in the House substitute for House Bill 2007.

Chief Justice Marla Luckert addressed the committee after the staff overview. She thanked the committee for prior budget support and said the branch processed more than 330,000 cases in 2024 across the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and 31 judicial districts. Luckert said roughly 90% of the branch's budget pays salaries and wages and that operating funds are comparatively small.

"They removed $3,800,000 from the judicial branch's base budget, and that will have significant impact on the operations in every courthouse across the state," Luckert said. She told the committee a 1.5% across-the-board reduction taken in the House approach resulted in a disproportionate share of that cut falling to the judicial branch and that, for the branch, roughly $3,300,000 equals about 20% of its operating budget.

Pratt walked the committee through line items the House substitute includes for FY2026: a $1,500,000 SGF transfer to support specialty treatment courts (the branch had requested $3,000,000), $150,000 for a credit-card payment upgrade, and several software and IT maintenance items that the House partially funded (including $33,000 related to meeting NIST standards required by 2024 Senate Bill 291). House substitute language also included $10,100,000 for judge salaries and wages and $3,000,000 (including $2,100,000 SGF) to increase base pay for nonjudicial employees for FY2026. Pratt said a floor amendment removed $500,000 SGF from the judicial branch and redirected it to the State Fire Marshal for firefighter relief; after the House activity the amount appropriated in the House substitute for House Bill 2007 totaled $236,600,000, including $226,600,000 SGF.

Luckert asked the committee to consider the operational impacts of reductions that primarily affect non-salary operating accounts. She said a material cut to operating funds limits the branch's ability to maintain IT, security and other system supports and will ultimately slow case processing in criminal, child welfare and other time-sensitive dockets.

Committee members asked for clarification about which IT subrequests were fully or partially funded in the House substitute and whether certain items that were partially funded could be implemented in stages. Luckert and staff said some initiatives—such as an expanded speech-to-text pilot and jury-management replacements—could be scaled if partial funding were provided, but they emphasized many items address long-term obsolescence or statutory cybersecurity requirements and could not be completed without full funding.

Pratt and Chief Justice Luckert stood for committee questions about the numbers and the interplay between the special committee on the legislative budget motions and subsequent House actions. The committee did not record a formal vote in this hearing; KLRD and the branch described the House substitute for House Bill 2007 as the currently available position the Senate committee was reviewing.