Legislators Need to Hear from You Now Re: Funding for State Courts
On Tuesday the Boston Bar Association and the Massachusetts Bar Association helped rally support for adequate funding of the judiciary in the FY2010 budget with a special Court Advocacy Day at the State House. If you were unable to attend this event, please call your state legislators today. The House will be filing its budget before the end of April, so legislators need to hear from you now.
Please urge your legislators to support the judiciary’s request for a maintenance budget of $622.7 million for FY 2010. As you may know, last October, the judiciary voluntarily accepted over $22 million in cuts to its FY 2009 budget and the hiring freeze implemented as a result of those cuts has left courts ill equipped to handle an ever increasing volume of cases. The Governor’s proposed budget for FY 2010 would reduce funding for state courts by another $24 million, more than 7%. Earlier this year, the Boston Bar Association Task Force on the FY 2010 Judiciary Budget studied the likely impact of budget cuts for residents of Massachusetts. Its Report of the Boston Bar Association Task Force on the FY2010 Judiciary Budget concluded that the appropriation proposed by the Governor would threaten the fair administration of justice in Massachusetts with the consequences of underfunding “fall[ing] disproportionately upon the Commonwealth’s most disadvantaged residents and upon court employees who already bear the weight of understaffing.”
To read Jon Saltzman’s Boston Globe story about Court Advocacy day, click here. |
