Michigan officials outline centralized trial-court fund and collections to curb profit-driven fines

Tom Boyd, administrator with the State Court Administrative Office of the Michigan Supreme Court, and Michael Bosanek, Monroe County administrator and chief financial officer, told the Senate Committee on Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety that a newly proposed trial court funding model would centralize court-generated revenues in a trial court fund held in the Michigan Department of Treasury and redistribute money to local courts based on approved budgets and a uniform workload analysis.

The plan, developed under Public Act 47 of 2024 and produced by teams convened by the Michigan Judicial Council, rests on four funding sources: local maintenance-of-effort contributions from 135 primary funding units, existing court-generated revenues centralized in the new fund, federal funds (largely Title IV-D child-support and Title IV-E childcare/foster-care funding), and additional state general-fund support. Bosanek said the working estimate for annual trial-court operations is $1,220,000,000, with local units currently covering roughly $704,000,000 (about 58%), court-generated…