Court services will suffer Iowa chief justice says layoffs ‘unavoidable’

Iowa's court-system faces deep spending cuts and employee reductions that will have a “devastating impact” on the delivery of services and likely reshape the judicial branch, officials said Monday.

Marsha Ternus, chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, put judicial branch employees on notice that a work force reduction is “unavoidable.” The court must cut $16 million from its budget - 95 percent of which is personnel-related costs - to meet a 10 percent reduction in state spending ordered by Gov. Chet Culver last week.

“None of our options for reducing expenses are good,” Ternus said in her memo. “The cuts are so deep that our organization may not look the same after the required reductions are implemented.”

The court's judicial council will meet this week to consider how to reduce the judicial branch's $162 million operating budget with less than nine months remaining in the current fiscal year - prospects that Ternus called “very troubling.”

Ternus invited judicial branch employees to submit their ideas for how to deal with the spending reductions by noon today.

Previously, the court ordered unpaid furloughs, employee layoffs and court closure days to deal with funding reductions to the judicial branch. Ternus said the courts already have attempted to minimize spending by filling only critical job vacancies, but she noted that those savings won't be enough to avoid a new round of work force reductions.

“Judicial branch budget cuts will be deeper than anyone had anticipated,” Ternus said. “Moreover, the longer we wait to reduce expenses, the more difficult it becomes to reach the necessary level of cuts in the remaining months of fiscal year 2010.”

Likewise, K-12 school districts that have 80 percent of their costs tied up in personnel continued to struggle with ways to deal with a midyear adjustment in state aid, said Mary Gannon of the Iowa Association of School Boards.

School districts most likely will delay purchases and cut support staff. Contract positions like teachers and administrators are off the table this year unless unions agree to reopen collective bargaining discussions, she noted.

Districts with cash reserves likely will tap them. Other districts likely will have to use borrowing or spending authority to bridge the gap. Some districts are considering early-retirement options, Gannon added.