Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb warned lawmakers in a State of the Judiciary address on March 8 that a proposed 10% cut to the courts’ budget would “cause hundreds of layoffs to a work force that is already down to 2005 numbers.” Cobb, a Democrat elected in 2006 and the first woman to hold that office in Alabama, spoke to a joint session of the Legislature as the state faced a gap in the General Fund.
Cobb said the trial courts were forced to lay off 120 employees the previous year. After reductions “in every operating category from travel to juror costs,” she was authorizing the layoff of at least 74 more. The governor’s recommended appropriation for the courts for fiscal 2012 was 10% less than the courts received in fiscal 2011. Cobb said the court system was grateful the recommended cut was not larger.
Cobb said the court system had made cut after cut and that “there is nothing else to cut.” The address listed savings already made, including a hiring freeze on all Unified Judicial System employees that began in September 2008 and the elimination of part-time bailiffs except in capital murder cases. Retired and active judges had been asked to take continuing assignments in counties with high caseloads and too few judges, and most had agreed.
The Administrative Office of Courts had asked judges and clerks to “request that jurors (who can) voluntarily waive juror pay.” Cobb told lawmakers the courts had to be adequately funded: “Simply put, civilized society depends on the Court System, and the Court System depends upon you, the Legislative branch, to fund us.”
Peter Hardin reported this story for Gavel Grab on March 9, 2011, when the site was a project of Justice at Stake. His original post is preserved by the Internet Archive. This account of the same events was written from the public record.
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