Editorial

Poor Justice

Two years ago, in his annual State of the Judiciary speech to a joint session of the House and Senate, Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. pleaded for enough money to hire four additional court reporters. It would be penny wise and pound foolish not to fund the new positions, Lake said, because a shortage of court reporters often was causing the wheels of justice to grind to a halt.

He said that in courthouses across the state, Superior Court sessions were being canceled, leaving the judge, district attorney and a lot of other high-priced legal talent sitting on their hands because no court reporter was available. Imagine how all those upstanding citizens who answered the call for jury duty felt, the chief justice said, when it was explained to them why they had wasted a day of their lives.

But the legislature didn’t give Lake the money to hire the four court reporters. As he said recently in this year’s State of the Judiciary speech, there actually is one fewer court reporter on the payroll now than two years ago. “The damage from this kind of breakdown is measured not just in the cost of wasted time and resources, but also in the enormous amount of bad will and hostility generated and directed toward our court system by all those citizens who have been made to suffer the wasteful loss of valuable time out of their lives. The cost of a court reporter is minimal compared to this,” Lake said in his report.

Most people are shocked at the relatively small sums we spend operating our court system. Two years ago the entire judicial branch — District Court, Superior Court, the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court and all their support functions — operated on just $317 million. When the state’s budget crisis hit, the courts took cuts like every other agency. This year’s appropriation was $304 million, and Governor Easley has asked for only $297 million for next year. That’s less than 3 percent of the state budget. By comparison, the state spends $581 million on local mental health programs.

We have repeatedly asked our court system to do more with less money, and our judges and court administrators have responded, even as the number of court cases climbed by 11 percent. But as Lake wearily told legislators, the courts have passed the point of diminishing returns, where further cuts — like the failure to hire the court reporters — will cost money.

We’re not advocating higher taxes to raise more money for the judiciary. We are saying that that the state should set priorities for allocating its available resources, and the courts deserve better funding than they’ve been getting.

-- Steve Tuttle

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