Tight budget may signal court cutbacks

DES MOINES - Lawmakers continued their slow trek toward adjournment Wednesday with action on pieces of a $7.35 billion state budget that could usher in cutbacks for county clerks of court facing a status-quo funding level beginning July 1.

The Iowa Senate voted 26-24 to finalize a nearly $181.8 million spending level for Iowa's Judicial Branch which would be unchanged from current funding for a budget area that requested a $5.6 million increase to support current court operations and the 1,903 employees spread among courthouses in Iowa's 99 counties.

'I don't have any answers yet,” said State Court Administrator David Boyd after senators approved House File 2457 but did not send it to Gov. Terry Branstad yet pending action on the remaining fiscal 2017 budget bills. He previously had warned that clerks of court offices could face a return to employee layoffs, furloughs, reduced hours or other belt-tightening measures given that personnel costs make up 95 percent of judicial costs.

Sen. Tom Courtney, D-Burlington, co-chair of the Legislature's justice-systems budget subcommittee, called this year's appropriations process 'extremely difficult and painful” in lamenting that the House-Senate joint budget targets did not provide enough money to run the state's court system.

'We are short-changing our courts,” said Courtney, floor manager of H.F. 2457 during Wednesday's Senate debate. 'This is a status-quo budget. As we all know, the status quo budget means potential cutbacks. The Judicial Branch deserves to be able to function at a level where it can adequately serve all Iowans.”

Sen. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, tried unsuccessfully to include language requiring county clerk offices to be open during normal business hours like elected county officials to close a 'loophole” in the bill that addressed conducting normal hours 'such as is reasonably possible” given the budget constraints.

'This is a very reasonable proposal,” Garrett told his Senate colleagues, but Courtney dismissed it as 'an unfunded mandate” that would take away court administrators' flexibility for making the best use of limited dollars.

Also Wednesday, senators voted 27-23 to approve an economic development budget bill that provided nearly $43 million in general fund money and $27 million in other funds for job-creation and workforce development functions and a $192.3 million measure using state gaming profits to finance various vertical infrastructure projects and activities around the state for next fiscal year.

Included in Senate File 2324 was $42 million in the state's environment first fund, $32.4 million in tuition replacement funding at the state Board of Regents institutions, $5 million for the Community Attractions & Tourism (CAT) grants, $5.1 million for an ag water quality initiative, $1.9 million for ag drainage wells, $9.6 million in natural resources funding for lake restoration and water quality programs, $3.5 million for state park infrastructure, and nearly $29 million from a state bond repayment fund to provide one-time money for a number of projects.

Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, the bill's floor manager, also included $1 each for major improvements at the Wallace State Office Building, the State Historical Building and the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy in a procedural move to keep alive the possibility of convincing a House-Senate conference committee to borrow $110 million to finance the upgrades.

'It will never be cheaper to fix these buildings than it is currently,” McCoy told his follow senators. 'I think it would be a prudent and wise investment.”

However, Gov. Terry Branstad and Republicans who control the Iowa House have balked at bonding in favor of a pay-as-you-go approach.

'With the tight budget picture as it is, the governor believes that taking on more debt is not the right solution to renovating state facilities,” Branstad spokesman Ben Hammes said this week.

House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, concurred on Wednesday.

'We are still paying for the I-JOBS projects to the tune of $55 million a year, so I think a pay as you go opportunity is a better one,” said Upmeyer. 'We're always happy to have conversations, but I haven't heard anybody in the caucus suggest that bonding was the way to deal with the issue.”

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, conceded 'it's not likely that the bonding bill is going to go through,” but McCoy said it was a better option than to 'kick the can down the road” while not maintaining 'failing” buildings that pose a health and safety risk to employees and Iowans.

'We are failing the taxpayers and I think we are adding cost to government that the taxpayers are bearing as a result of our negligence,” McCoy said on the Senate floor. 'We always hear about government should run like a business. Well, businesses don't let their buildings fall down. They invest in them.”

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