Years of sustained budget cuts to the state Trial Court system are starting to reach what administrators called a visible breaking point, with the reductions becoming increasingly apparent in everyday public proceedings.
Just last week, for instance, a Suffolk Superior Court judge had to wait more than two hours for a clerk to arrive from another session before conducting public business, causing him to look at his caseload and vent, “I’ll tend to it, as soon as I can get a clerk.’’
This came in the same week that the Trial Court started to restrict public access hours in clerks’ offices at 38 courthouses across the state, to allow clerks to catch up on a backlog of paperwork without having to tend to people at the counter. They will not answer phone calls, either.
“It really is at the point now where we cannot continue to deliver justice,’’ said Robert A. Mulligan, chief justice for judicial administration and management for the Trial Court of Massachusetts. “We just don’t have enough people.’’
The cuts are part of the bigger budget woes the state has faced in the economic crunch over the last several years. With a loss of $70 million in funding during the last four years, court administrators have been scrambling to save. Courthouses have been closed and merged into others - a dozen other consolidations are currently under review - to reduce lease and other costs.
But court administrators say the more difficult cuts to absorb have been the reductions in staff. With a hiring freeze that has been in effect since 2008, the system has lost 1,167 employees since 2007 as a result of attrition. The court had 6,462 workers as of Sept. 1, making this the first time it has had fewer than 7,000 employees since 1997, according to the agency’s figures.
Court administrators say the system, which devotes 75 percent of its overall spending to payroll, is bound to see further staff cuts as they predict a shortfall in revenue this fiscal year, leaving the courts with $509.2 million, down from $535.9 million last year. The Trial Court received $583 million in 2008.
Paula M. Carey, chief justice for the 14 probate and family court divisions across the state, said her staff is so thin that certain jurisdictions will be disrupted if one person is out sick or on leave, and she has had to dispatch secretaries and other administrators to serve as a clerk for a session.
For every judge in Suffolk, for instance, there is only one clerk, leaving no one to handle the office counter. Carey said she reluctantly agreed to restrict public access hours in all of her divisions so that clerks can go back to processing cases that are more than a year old.