Clerks ask Legislature for $22M to cover growing due‑process and court administration costs
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
Clerks of the court told the Appropriations Committee they need $22 million to stabilize operations that support injunctions, high‑risk no‑fee cases, jury management and staffing for newly approved judges; the request includes applying CPI indexing to statutory fees.
Stacy Butterfield, clerk of the circuit court and comptroller for Polk County, presented the Clerks of the Court Operations Corporation’s budget priorities and said clerks are operating on outdated statutory fee levels.
Butterfield told senators clerks collect and distribute roughly $850 million annually in legislatively created court fines and fees, but that authorized statutory reimbursement rates for key services have not kept pace with inflation since 2008. The clerks’ appropriation request totals $22 million to cover high‑priority areas: injunctions for protection (estimated reimbursement $3.1M), other high‑risk no‑fee case types (about $2.4M), jury management and due‑process cost increases ($4.8M), and $11.7M to staff support for 37 new judges funded last session.
Butterfield said the clerks’ projected available resources and budget authority are approximately $544 million versus a projected budget need of $619 million this year, creating structural gaps that the clerks say must be addressed through both appropriation and policy changes. She noted that 90% of clerk costs are staff and benefits and that postage and summons costs have risen sharply.
Senator Smith asked about legislation (referred to in the hearing as SB 532) to apply CPI indexing to statutory court fees; Butterfield described it as a CPI “bill” intended to align fees with current costs. Senator Ryan asked about collections; Butterfield said clerks have dedicated collections staff, use payment plans and statutory timelines for outsourcing aging accounts, and offered to provide the committee the annual collections and assessments report.
Butterfield said clerks are a front line for public access to the justice system and requested targeted investment to avoid service reductions, warning that without funding clerks will have to divert resources away from civil, family and criminal case processing.
Next steps: Clerks will provide additional collections data to senators and the committee will consider the clerks’ $22M request alongside other budget priorities and any fee‑indexing legislation.