 of the Chief Justice for Administration and Management of Massachusetts, Robert Mulligan, Chief Justice of Connecticut, Chase Rogers, and the Chief Justice of Maine, Lee Softly. Very good. Wow. Thank you very, very much for being with us. And have you coin flipped or anything? We coin flipped. Here we go. You're organized. I'm up. I guess good afternoon now. My name is Chase Rogers, and I'm here to address you in my role as Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. I first want to thank you for the honor of having the opportunity to testify before you today. I plan to limit my comments today to the critical issue of providing access to our courts, even when funding is severely limited. By way of background, Connecticut, we have a unified court system with 201 authorized judges and 4,200 employees. Our budget is about $500 million, which represents about 3% of Connecticut's state budget. In addition to our core-related functions of adjudicating cases, the judicial branch provides a host of other services, including adult and juvenile probation, victim services, child support enforcement, and operating the juvenile detention facilities. I highlight this because while funding for some of these non-adjudicative functions has increased over the past 10 years, they now represent one half of our budget. On the other hand, funding for our core-related functions have remained essentially flat during the same 10-year period. This stagnation was compounded by several cuts unilaterally imposed during the last fiscal year by our previous governor. To address this shortfall, we were forced to close one juvenile court, two law libraries, froze non-unionized employees' salaries, eliminated reimbursements for out-of-state travel, instituted a hiring freeze, and furloughed our employees and judges for seven days during the past two and a half years. We also currently have 17 judge vacancies. We face different financial challenges this year, as the state is facing its largest deficit ever. In response, the Connecticut General Assembly enacted a biennial budget that included savings of $2 billion in anticipated employee union concessions. Additionally, the governor made it very clear that if a deal was not reached, about 4,700 state employees would be laid off, which would mean more than 400 of these layoffs would occur in the judicial branch. While the governor and the coalition have since agreed to a union concession package, it still must be ratified by the unions and approved by the legislature. So the situation for us remains very fluid even today. To address these uncertainties, we have been working on various contingency plans. These include laying off branch employees throughout the system, closing more courthouses, eliminating special dockets, and closing additional law libraries. As you can imagine, any of these measures alone would dramatically impact the services that we can provide to our residents. Of course, we're not alone. This is a difficult time for state courts across the country. To respond to budget reductions, many of our state judicial branches have been forced to reduce or freeze salaries, impose layoffs, furlough, delay the filling of vacancies, reduce the hours of operation, and increase fines and fees. And I just wanna spend a second on the fines and fees and reducing hours. Unfortunately, the option of reducing the hours of operation and increasing fees and fines may have a serious negative impact on access to justice. How does a working single mom who's trying to pay a fine which is already gonna result in fewer groceries for the week take care of the problem if no business is conducted after 4 p.m. without losing more work time? And at what point do fees become simply too high for a low income individual to pursue his or her rights? It's not hard to imagine a scenario where the courts are really available only to the people with time and money. Fortunately, we haven't had to implement and I'm gonna fight it to the death, either one of those options, although both of them still need to be considered. The problem we face are compounded because in times of trouble, residents desperately seek help from the courts much more than in prosperous periods. In other words, the courts cannot simply say close for business due to lack of funding. Our statistics tell the story. Over the past four years, Connecticut has seen an increase in the number of civil cases added to our dockets by 37%, mostly attributable to the increase in foreclosure and contract collection cases. We are also seeing more people appearing before us who lack the funds to hire an attorney. In Connecticut, for example, in 2010, an astounding 84% of all family cases and 27% of all civil cases had at least one party who was self-represented. The numbers are close to 90% in housing matters. This is my biggest concern, the lack of legal representation because I believe that this is changing the system in ways that we cannot even imagine yet. What we do know is that the lack of attorney representation puts even more pressure on the court system to provide a level playing field in order to ensure that justice is done. It does not appear that the number of self-represented parties is going to go down. The situation is even of greater concern when you consider that legal aid organizations are able to meet only a small fraction of the legal needs of those who cannot afford an attorney. Another significant challenge, which was alluded to before, facing the system throughout the country is the growing number of limited English proficiency residents. Like other states, we have had to be creative because funding is not available to hire additional interpreters. To respond to this need, the Connecticut Judicial Branch is contracted with a language services company that provides over-the-telephone translations of more than 170 languages. And I know you had asked about cross-pollination between the states. I believe that at least two other states have come down to see how that's working in Connecticut and we try to, you know, when we find something, we try to share that information. In addition, we've enhanced our website to better serve both self-represented parties and the LAP population. We also now have many how-to publications that have been translated into Spanish and other languages, and we've developed videos to assist self-represented parties in navigating a particular court process so that they have the information they need before coming to court. We've also increased our use of video conferencing. For example, the appellate court, which is interesting, has begun using video conferencing equipment in matters involving incarcerated self-represented parties so that prisoners don't need to be transported to the court. Why do I mention some of the things we've been doing? I think it's important to know that we're not just resting on the status quo. And while all of these initiatives are important and necessary, there is only so much the creativity can accomplish. We are not a discretionary agency, and I would argue that our courts, particularly in these bad times, are more relevant and necessary than before. Unfortunately, I do fear that many, including some within government, view the courts as just another agency. That is why forums such as today are so important, and I appreciate the ABA's efforts to spotlight the critical role that our state courts play in our society and why it's paramount that the courts receive adequate funding. I and my colleagues in other states are ready to assist in these efforts in any way that you ask us to do so. Thank you again for the opportunity to address you today. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Good afternoon. I wanna thank Dean Broderick and the University of New Hampshire School of Law for hosting this important event. I also wanna thank the ABA for having the energy and foresight to address the long-term effects on access to justice caused by these unprecedented budget restrictions on judicial branches throughout the country. You asked whether this was a crisis of the courts or the justice system. I wanna suggest to you that this is a crisis of democracy. I recently spent some time with a judge from Guatemala who was here to see how we did it and was astounded to find all of the cuts and all of the difficulties that we're suffering in the United States, whereas you've indicated earlier, our system of justice has been the envy of the world. He suggested in what I thought was a fairly eloquent phrase that the surest way for a democracy to commit suicide is to forget that an independent justice system is at the very core of the government's operations. We are not, as Chief Justice Chase has just said, we are not a discretionary agency. We are a core function of government and we have to be funded. I say that in the context of a state which for several decades has been funded at the lowest per capita levels of any court system in the nation. Adding to these difficulties, we haven't escaped the economic disaster that's befallen most state governments in recent years. The resulting budget cuts hitting a judicial branch that has been chronically underfunded have created additional impediments to our capacity to provide timely access for justice to all of the public. Even before the crisis of the last several years, the main public has historically done without many of the core components of a court system. For example, basic safety. In main courthouses, we've been very slow to institute entry screening. At this point, after 10 years of efforts, we are entry screening in our courthouses less than 20% of our court days. There are far too many days when anyone with a dangerous weapon can walk straight into a courtroom in the state of Maine. There are only 39 courthouses for a geographic expanse of 35 million square miles and only 53 trial judges for a population of 1.3 million people. Maine's judicial branch has no electronic filing capacity, court schedules are not available online and there is insufficient staff to provide central help lines. In contrast to many states, Maine does not have sufficient clerks to work in the courtrooms with our judges. In far too many courtrooms, the judge is alone on the bench having to deal with recording equipment by him or herself or even with the assistance of distracted court security. Several years ago, we were forced to lay off one third of our court reporter staff leaving only 10 court reporters for the entire state before we were able to create a quality system of electronic court recording. And the Maine judicial branch has very few administrators. For example, scheduling of trial judges in the state is done by the trial court chiefs with paper and pencil. If the notebook gets lost, we have no idea what we're doing. We've also had to eliminate all but the most critical of books for our judges and to rely entirely on online research to the, I hate to say it, youngsters at the law school that does not sound painful. But for a multi-generational group of judges, losing books has been a very difficult transition. So it's against that backdrop that the economic disasters of the last several years have taken an additional toll in the state of Maine. To respond to across-the-board budget cuts, the Maine judicial branch has had to leave between 35 and 45 of its 493 total general fund positions vacant. That 493 includes security, judges, clerks, the works. The rolling freeze has meant even fewer staff to respond to continuing flow of new cases and the results have been very troubling. In several areas of the state, courthouses are dark for pre-arranged hours each week. We have instituted a system of administrative weeks, now three a year, during which we don't schedule any ordinary dockets across the state, just to give the clerks' offices an opportunity to catch up with a flood of paper. We establish these administrative weeks well in advance. And for example, the administrative weeks for 2012 are already set. So we don't disrupt the public. We don't cancel dockets. And they have proved to be highly effective in assisting in the paperwork backlogs. Unfortunately, that takes three weeks out of the year that eliminates time to get the actual trials done. The Supreme Judicial Court has also established guidelines to assure that the highest priority case types are reached as quickly as possible. The priorities, not surprisingly, include any matters of personal violence, criminal cases, child protection cases, and family matters in which child-related disputes are present. Unfortunately, the results of setting these priorities has been substantial delays in civil, non-family matters. This of course creates delays for the business community, landlords, and small businesses at a time when the main economy can ill afford it. Our county law libraries found their funding and access to electronic research cut with the ultimate result that only two county libraries survived with any meaningful presence today. Judicial education's been cut to the bone. Our ability to bring the clerks together to train them on new laws, new forms, and new methods of calculating interest has been dramatically reduced. These basic responsibilities often result in increased strain in the clerk's offices with inevitable errors and omissions that make things even more difficult for the public. All of our substantial trial dockets, even difficult family matters, are handled through the, hated by the bar, trailing docket system, causing inevitable uncertainty and further difficulties for the public. In some regions, parties have to return to our courthouses six or seven times before their matter is reached. The technological promises of improved efficiency have remained out of our reach because of lack of resources and the ensuing mobius loop of new cases, fewer resources, and fewer tools to address the unremitting caseload has taken its toll. One of the oddest but increasingly alarming problems we have is the issue of record storage. Since all records are still on paper and we don't have resources for appropriate storage facilities, the boxes and boxes of files and files pile up in the clerk's offices, in hallways, in chambers, overflowing the storage rooms, creating fire hazards and serious traffic difficulties in our courtrooms. The mortgage foreclosure crisis has added to the strain with foreclosure filings more than doubling in the last four years. Unfortunately, we're now learning that court delays in our landlord tenant cases have affected a number of our small businesses and citizens whose income has been augmented by ownership of small apartment buildings, resulting to foreclosures now are adding to the economic misery in Maine. Maine trial judges always among the lowest paid in the country, although the best looking, I would like to have on the record. We have now officially dropped to the very least paid according, accounting for the cost of living, which may also mean we are absolutely at the top of the best looking judges around. Overall, the strain on the system is taking its toll, delays in the resolution of cases are substantial, judgments and rits are delayed, paper gets lost, safety is compromised, the inevitable oversights and mistakes that occur in a strained system have even affected liberty interests. There is, however, in Maine, a bright spot on the horizon. In this legislative session, notwithstanding the continually challenging economic circumstances of the state, Governor LePage presented a budget that allows the judicial branch to fill critical vacancies and to replace one of our most dangerous courthouses. In addition, a study will occur this summer to determine the costs and time necessary to bring electronic filing to Maine's courts. I'm pleased to report that with bipartisan support the governor's budget has been tentatively approved by the Appropriations Committee. If the budget passes as proposed, we will be able to eliminate dark hours in the clerk's offices, slightly improve entry screening capacity, and to begin to address the serious backlogs in civil business and landlord tenant cases. I've been gratified to work with both of the other branches of government and to hear them now reflecting back to us the critical importance of justice, not just for the economic health for the state of Maine, but also for democracy itself. The governor and I met immediately after his inauguration and we've been talking regularly since then. Legislators have accepted our invitations to visit busy courthouses, to wash the proceedings and to meet with judges. They invited me to speak to the committee on the court's jurisdiction and they followed up with questions and suggestions. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court sits every fall in local high schools to hear oral argument allowing thousands of students and parents to see an appellate court at work all at the invitation of the local legislators. Lawyer legislators have been very effective and have articulated the public's right to a working court system and explained the actual results of chronic underfunding. While there is no panacea, effective communication among the branches of government has been critical in Maine and I'm optimistic that the efforts underway really do represent a renewed understanding of the critical nature of justice in our society. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you, thank you. Dickens couldn't have written some of your testimonies about what's happening, it's really very tragic. Chief Justice Mulligan. I'm Bob Mulligan, the C-Jam of the Mass Trial Court. I'm here for Chief Justice Roderick Ireland, the Chief Justice of our Supreme Judicial Court who sends his regrets. First, I'd like to also thank you, Mr. Olson and Ms. Olson and Attorney David Boyce for your enormous investment of time and effort into this vitally important issue and to the August members of the ABA panel. I'd like to speak briefly about Massachusetts, our funding, our response to the lack of funding and what we see as the result of our response and frankly some very elementary solutions which I think would be important to us. I've filed written testimony, I'm not going to read it but I may refer to the charts on page 15, 16 and 17. First of all, the Massachusetts court system has 379 judges in the trial court. We operate at 103 courthouses across the state. We average more than 40,000 people excluding employees and jurors visiting our courthouses each day. Last year, for example, we issued, judges issued 38,000 restraining orders disposed of 243,000 criminal cases and 250,000 civil cases. We started fiscal year 09, FY09 at $605 million. That was our appropriation. Our appropriation for FY10 was $559 million. I think this is on page 15. Our appropriation, this fiscal year is $544 million. The fiscal year ends on June 30th and today we're in the budget process for FY12. The numbers in play from the House and Senate, the House number is 520.5. The Senate number is 519.7, 519.8, excuse me. So there's only $700,000 in play for us right now when it goes to conference. Those figures will represent from 605 and FY09 to 520 next fiscal year, FY12, an $85 million or 14% reduction in our funding. Well, what has been the response of the trial court to that reduction in funding? You've heard a lot of the things that have been done by the states. We've done the same things. We've had an absolute hiring freeze in place since October of 2008, very limited hiring before that, for the year before that. But since October of 2008, regardless who was retired from our system, he or she has not been replaced. Not one person has been hired in the organization. We've promoted limited within the organization to fill positions of leadership. The judges, the clerics and the managers all took five days, worked five days without pay our last fiscal year. We've closed courthouses. We've probably put everything in place other than involuntary laying off any person. It's been a personal goal of mine and a goal of the other trial court chiefs that we not lay off people, not even to lay off in one area, say in the area where they may be less core to hire in another area. So the result of this hiring freeze and some retirement incentives we've put in place, you'll see on page 16, we have a decrease of 1,091 employees from July 1st, 07 to last Wednesday. So 1,000 people, that's 14.3%. Since the hiring freeze, I think it's about 1,025. Of the 1,091 people, 220 of them are court officers, 220 of them are security force who provide front door security. We do have front door security at all of our courthouses and who provide security in the courtroom. So obviously we can tell stories about the anecdotes and stories about the effect of this reduction in personnel. One of the things we're very proud of, we did very good work. We established a green team and we have lowered our energy costs from 20 million a year in FY08 to less than 15 million a year through rewriting contracts and some other environmental initiatives. As a matter of fact, the green team has won three awards from the EPA. Various other cost-eating measures, I'm not gonna go through all of them. So what do we see as an impact from this reduction in personnel? We use the court tools from the advocates of the court tools. Mary McQueen will be happy to hear that. Those are the metrics-oriented measurement systems proposed by the National Son of a State Courts. If you look on page 17 of the, of the, my testimony, you'll see the bar graphs on the bottom showing that our time to this disposition has remained flat. Our clearance rate is now below 100%. It was 116% in 2006, 101% in 2007. It's now 96.9%. We can't keep up with the cases at what you're coming into the system. And unlike New York, our foreclosures have driven our increases, but basically our numbers are fairly static. They haven't increased that much in the last couple of years. The age of pending cases is increasing dramatically. As you can see in the blue bar graph at the center from 2007, we had 73,500 cases are laying about inventory. Those are the cases beyond time standards. And last year we had 92,000. So we can directly show through empirical numbers the effect of this reduction in 1,000 people is having on our ability to deliver timely justice. I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but you talk about solutions. I'm almost embarrassed to say this. They seem so paltry, but these are things I could use as CGM in Massachusetts. First of all, an appropriation without line items and without earmarks. An appropriation of which I would have full authority to use where I saw fit. Two, the ability to close courthouses. To close courthouses without political interference, if I could put it that way, and the ability to redraw jurisdictional lines. And a third, very simple thing, when I think these exist in many states, a judicial impact statement, including the requisite funding for any initiatives that are placed on the trial court or on the Massachusetts judiciary. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak about Massachusetts. Thank you, Chief Justice Mulligan. And thank you particularly for those ideas at the end. We are working on a resolution to present to the House of Delegates, the American Bar Association in August. And we're preparing a lengthy report that is going to incorporate many of the things that we've been hearing today. Chief Justice. Yes, I just have two very brief questions. In my last year as Chief Justice, I've had an unscientific email survey to all the lawyers in New Hampshire. And I asked them to rate the court system on a one to 10, 10 being fabulous, one being you should go out of business. The average rating among the 800 lawyers who replied was 5.5 on a 10 point scale. And that was before the recent budget cuts. My question is this. I'm not asking to comment on the determination of the staff or the judges because I think I know that that's pretty high. How would you rate on a letter scale, A being fabulous, F being failing, the system that's on the ground today in Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts, and how much more money or what percentage increase in your budget would you need to have a court system that you could be proud of on the ground? Well, I wanna keep my job, so I'm not gonna say an F, but you know, as you know, we've tried to be very innovative. So I would say without patting myself on the back or the people that work with me, we're about a B right now, but what I fear is what's about to happen, particularly with the limiting inter-gloves proficiency and the lack of attorney representation. So I don't wanna give you a dollar figure, but what I would say to you and sort of following up on the solution idea where I think all the courts need money is for technology and that, we have been successful, we do have mandatory e-filing and civil matters now and that has reduced the number of civil clerks that we need for that function and we have them doing other things like helping people who come in and say, I don't have a lawyer and I don't know where to go. During our busiest times, we pull clerks out and have them literally as greeters at the front door. So any way that we can start getting some funding for technology that we can then share around the country, that would be a tremendous help to I think the states. Chief Justice, the Maine does not have lifetime tenure. Can you answer that question? Yeah. I would say that all the courts in Maine are above average. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, but your question leads me to actually reflect back a question to you. One of the things that we are learning when we talk to the bar is that fewer and fewer lawyers want to be involved in litigation of any type. We're finding the young lawyers coming out of law school are in fairly unprecedented numbers not staying in the kinds of practice that bring them to court. So when we ask lawyers how are we doing, we are asking a smaller and smaller group of people and in fact, the people we need to be asking are those who are unrepresented, who are in our courts so very often and asking them that question is very difficult. I think we are not doing well by the public right now, but I'm sticking with my above average ranking. Chief Justice Mason, Keeler, everyone. Very good. This may not sound reasonable, but I would say the courts are working at a B plus, frankly. I say that because the people take great pride in what they do. The type A's are gonna work harder and harder through lunch and work late. The others who may not be type A's are gonna work at the same level they always worked at. So the people have stepped up and responded tremendously. I have some very difficult problems we have, I had assigned a union contract in 2007. I was able to get the money for FY08 for that particular union, 3500 clerical employees. I couldn't pay them in nine and 10. So they went back to the money they were making in FY07. I got the money this year to pay them part of what I owe them. Negotiations with our probation officer and security officer union right now. They haven't had a contract since 2006. And I don't have the money to pay them, frankly. Yet, as I say, these people's soldiers are on through these difficult times because they committed to what they do. I think that the grades reflect enormous conscientious commitments by the members of the staff and the judges. But if you were to give a grade, and I'm not gonna ask you this, of what it should be, what it is compared to what it should be for our citizens. If the courts were properly funded, I suspect you'd give a different answer. But I'm not gonna put you on the spot. I have no question. I'd like to make an observation that I would ask all of you who are present here to note. And that is when we had our hearing in Atlanta and today by these outstanding six chiefs that we've heard from, with the exception of a question that was directly asked of Judge Lipham. Not one judge, not one chief, asked for any salary increases for the members of their court or their staffs. What they've asked for is an opportunity for them and their staff members and up-fellow judges and the state court trial judges that they also supervise to do their job. The reality of it is, is that very bright and talented law graduates coming right out of law school will go to work for any one of them and members of their court. And one year later with one or two years of legal experience compared to 20 or more years of legal experience that you have before, they will make more money than the chiefs that you've heard from today. If we were someplace else in another country and when I was president of the American Bar from 2003 to 2004, I will tell you I've gone to other countries. And I've interacted with members of the bench. What we've heard here today and what we heard in Atlanta is really a crisis that they can't carry this weight by themselves. They need everybody's assistance. Bravo. And one more hand for our panel. Thank you very much. We wish you had more time. I'll work it.