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Michigan

Overview
  • Michigan is primarily a locally funded court system.  In FY 10, its general fund appropriation was reduced by 5-8% and in FY11, its appropriation was reduced by 1-4%, the same as the Executive Branch.  Its general fund budget was reduced from $153.1 million in FY10 to $151.6 million in FY11, $4.2 million less than the cost of funding level services.  Michigan did received an  $2.7 million more in additional state appropriations in FY11 than it received in FY10 and also received $400,000 more in additional federal revenue.
  • Michigan’s trial courts are primarily locally funded.  The state funds the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, and the State Court Administrative Office (SCAO). The state funding also includes appropriations that cover salaries, FICA payroll taxes, and defined contribution pension costs for trial court judges (other benefits received by the trial court judges, like health care and life insurance, are locally funded) and for certain payments to courts and local funding units which are disbursed based on statutory formulas using specified caseload and judgeship information. These appropriations make up nearly two-thirds of the total gross state-funded budget.
  • Michigan’s state funding was reduced from $259.2 million in FY11 to $256.9 million in FY12.   The reduction has led to a decrease in the number of judicial officers (two court of appeals judges and six trial court judges). Most local trial courts are facing reductions in their budgets as local revenues decrease, but the impact varies significantly from location to location.
  • The Michigan courts have endured several years of budget reductions at both the state and local levels, which have caused stresses in the system.  They have taken a number of steps at the state level to respond to the fiscal downturns, including:

    ·         layoffs of permanent and temporary employees;

    ·         hiring freezes and position consolidations (almost an 18% decrease in FTEs since FY 00);

    ·         unpaid furlough days (both voluntary and mandatory-  in FY09, judicial branch employees took six unpaid furlough days);

    ·         short-term court shutdowns;

    ·         judge salary freezes (judges last received a pay increase in January, 2002);

    ·         staff salary freezes (from FY 04 to FY 11, state judicial branch employees received 13% less in cost of living increases than unionized executive branch employees – 8% vs. 21%);

    ·         enhanced employee contributions to health care (in 2009, employees began contributing an additional 5% of the cost of health insurance, and employees hired after 4/1/2010 contribute 20% of the cost of health insurance.

    ·         court fee enhancements, with the added revenue used to replace general funds in the judicial branch appropriation.

    ·         court fines and fees collection programs;

    ·         expanded use of electronic communications, including posting material on the court website, conference calls, web based training, and regular e-mail communications; and

    ·         travel restrictions: Supreme Court justices, Court of Appeals judges and other judicial employees turned in their state-assigned vehicles in 2007.

  • Despite these budget challenges, the state courts have generally reported clearance rates of at or near 100 percent for calendar year 2010 and judges and judicial branch employees continue to strive to work more efficiently to meet their constitutional and statutory responsibilities.
  • Michigan is implementing a number of technology initiatives:
    • E-Filing is currently being piloted in a few courts while an E-Filing Advisory Group is developing standards and court rule amendments and determining whether there should be one e-filing system for all courts in Michigan.
    • Web ticket payment allows citizens to pay their tickets through the MI.GOV web site for participating courts (currently ten court locations with eight more to be implemented in 2011). In addition to being a convenience for ticket payers, the online payment system automatically posts transactions without involving court staff, a time savings that frees court employees for other duties. In 2010, the payment application was expanded to include tickets where the individual failed to resolve their ticket in a timely manner, resulting in the suspension of their driver’s license. The application upon payment will clear the suspension and restore the person’s driving privileges. This eliminates both need for the individual to travel to the Secretary of State’s Office and any processing by the office.
    • Videoconferencing allows prisoners and mental health patients to participate in court hearings without the risks and costs associated with bringing them to court. Michigan State Police technicians can also use video conferencing to participate in arraignments, pretrial conferences, and other court hearings without the time and expense of travel.
    • Containing approximately 40 million case records, the Judicial Data Warehouse allows the judiciary and law enforcement to obtain information about pending and closed cases throughout Michigan. As of December 31, 2010, the data warehouse was implemented in 228 courts in 81 counties. The 14 remaining courts are expected to be added to the warehouse in 2011. The Judicial Data Warehouse also supports data sharing with executive branch agencies and other SCAO applications—for example, a reporting system that tracks children at risk for neglect and abuse. This collaboration between SCAO and the Department of Human Services (DHS), is modeled on the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System and the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Others using data from the data warehouse include the Department of Corrections to complete pre-sentence investigations in less time and the Michigan State Police’s Criminal History System and Office of Highway Safety and Planning, as well as SCAO’s Drug Court Case Management System.
    • Move to a single statewide case management system:  Since trial courts are locally funded, in the past, each trial court selected a system that best met that court’s needs within its financial limits. As a result, the state’s 251 trial court locations are supported by many different case management systems, which are deployed on different and decentralized servers. A number of factors – the need to upgrade applications, an increase in mandated electronic reporting requirements, costly conversion failures, cutbacks in local funding, vendors’ termination of support services – led courts to seek better alternatives to their current case management systems. In 2008, Judicial Information Systems, the SCAO’s information technology division, began working with Unisys, a technology consulting firm, on a new case management system that will be available to all state trial courts. Completion of Phase I, which will culminate in pilot courts’ use of the case management system in civil cases, is slated for 2011.
  • The FY 2012 budget removed funding for two court of appeals judges and six trial court judges. The SCAO will be issuing a Judicial Resource Recommendations Report in August 2011 that is expected to recommend the elimination of additional judgeships through attrition. Earlier this year the Michigan State Bar Judicial Crossroads Task Force issued its report on the Michigan judiciary and concluded that Michigan can no longer afford the current system. Many of their recommendations are consistent with what the Supreme Court and the State Court Administrative Office have long urged – for example, the elimination of judgeships, by attrition, where workload no longer justifies their continuation. Trial courts are being encouraged to explore both “vertical” consolidation (the combining of resources across circuit, district, and probate courts in a judicial circuit) and “horizontal” consolidation of locations for district courts in urban areas of the state. Plans are also being developed to tie distribution of certain payments from the state to local trial courts and funding units to the adoption of best practices by the trial courts. The best practices requirements will be developed by the State Court Administrative Office.

Reports and Articles

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