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Judiciary budget highlights: juvenile retirement, business-court clerk parity, Superior Court judgeships and court IT requests
Summary
Committee heard short, specific requests from multiple judicial offices: juvenile court retirement contribution increases; Court of Appeals commute/security/cloud IT items; Supreme Court trooper-detail pass-through; Statewide Business Court clerk parity request; and Superior Court judgeship pay-structure adjustments tied to HB55.
Several smaller judicial offices made brief, targeted requests during the subcommittee’s amended FY26 review.
Kirsten Wallace, deputy director of the Council of Juvenile Court Judges, asked for an increase in pass-through funding for the juvenile judicial retirement system contribution (grants to counties). The Court of Appeals (Trent Brown) requested a half-year commute fund of $40,000 (about $20,000 for the six-month period), a shared security-director cost (transcribed as $62.05) and $197,000 annually to transition IT licensing to a cloud-based model.
A Supreme Court representative described a pass-through adjustment to the Department of Public Safety for a trooper detail assigned to the chief justice (amount is set annually by DPS and was adjusted after the FY26 budget submission). The Statewide Business Court introduced new Clerk of Court Emily Youngo and withdrew a previously requested leave-payout amount (about $41,000) due to the appointment timing; the court asked instead to fund parity for the business-court clerk to match the Court of Appeals clerk salary as required by law.
A representative for superior court judges explained three judgeships authorized in HB55 and noted those positions are mandatory opt-ins to the new pay structure; the transcript lists an effective date that reads "01/01/1926," which committee members treated as a typographic error consistent with other references to 2026 and the HB55 implementation timeline.
No votes were taken; the committee continued to ask clarifying questions and scheduled follow-ups where needed.
