State Judiciary Principles
-
Equitable levels of judicial services regardless of the property tax capacity of a particular county. The brand of justice received should not be dependent upon where one happens to live.
-
Budgetary accountability and co-location of policy-making and funding responsibility. Recognizing that all significant policy for the judiciary is made at the state not the county level bringing together at the same level of government the policy-making authority and the responsibility for funding it would result in improved budgetary accountability.
-
Administrative unity: With 87 counties as funding sources, the judiciary was a confederation of 87 different systems. State funding allows the judicial branch of state government to achieve, for the first time, real administrative unity so that policies, procedures and practices can be developed for the whole state, implemented uniformly and resources allocated accordingly.
-
Cost efficiency and effectiveness: By eliminating 87 independent silos of county budgets and moving to a single source of funding, gives the judicial branch the management flexibility to shift resources across county and district lines to meet workload demands and to take advantage of economies of scale of a large, statewide system.
-
Property tax relief: For the counties, this is a mechanism for the delivery of property tax relief since the cost of criminal justice system consistently outpaces general inflation.