AUGUSTA — Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Leigh Saufley told lawmakers Tuesday the state court system is maximizing its resources amid security and staffing concerns.
Saufley’s meeting with members of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee provided an overview of Maine’s court system and included a list of recent accomplishments and upcoming challenges.
“The mission of the branch is to administer justice by providing a safe, accessible, efficient and impartial system of dispute resolution that serves the public interest, protects individual rights and instills respect for the law,” she said. “We look at this mission on a regular basis, and it really does guide what we do with the few resources that we have to provide justice in the state.”
Maine has four separate court systems — federal, tribal, probate and state — and a total of 39 courthouses. The state court system has an operating budget this year of $49 million, with an additional $6.8 million to pay for debt service, Saufley said.
In 2010, the revenue collected by the system was about $47 million.
There are currently 60 judges, eight family-law magistrates and 425 nonjudicial employees in the system, she said.
“People are always asking about the court system and where we could streamline. Could we close courthouses? Could we reduce personnel?” Saufley said. “There aren’t too many courthouses.”
Maine also is short-staffed when it comes to court clerks, she said.
“The clerks of court are where we suffer our greatest vacancies right now, and they are the people who have the greatest contact with the public,” Saufley said. “We right now have only 260 clerk positions for entire state. That is not a lot, and comparing that to other states actually explains why we are feeling the strain right now.”
New Hampshire’s state court system has 655 nonjudicial positions, compared to Maine’s 425.
“It makes all the difference in the world,” she said. “That’s where there is a very big difference in our budgets.”
Saufley said New Hampshire’s budget was about $26 million more than Maine’s, at about $70 million.
The Granite State also has more judges — who are paid higher salaries — and more courthouses than Maine, despite its much smaller geographical size. Both states have approximiately the same population, about 1.3 million citizens.
“When we compare ourselves to New Hampshire, we are doing very well given the limited budget that we have at this point,” Saufley said. “But we are struggling, there’s no question about that.”
Improving security and technology are the biggest challenges facing the judiciary, she said, in addition to filling the staffing shortages.
“You will hear me talk about this, and I won’t stop talking about it until I can assure the public that there are no guns in courthouses,” said Saufley, adding that random entry screening with metal detectors only occurs about 20 percent of the time.
“That means that people can walk right straight into a courtroom with a gun in their pocket and not be stopped,” she said. “But it is never safe to try to bring a gun into the courthouse and in fact it’s against the law.”
Areas of improvement for the court system include continued consolidation of space and paperwork.
Forty-one clerks’ offices have been reduced to 26, two courthouses have recently been closed, four more have been consolidated into two, with more consolidations scheduled in the next three years, Saufley said.
Another success was unifying the criminal docket in Cumberland County, which helped the system become more efficient, an effort that will soon be replicated in Penobscot County, she said.
Mainers can also now pay their traffic ticket and court fines online.
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