A regular Source feature, Undercurrents explores issues, ideas and events as they develop beneath the surface in the Virgin Islands community.
It seems so easy: Consolidate a few duplicative “administrative functions” of the territory’s Superior and Supreme courts and save between $1.5 and $1.8 million a year. Who doesn’t want to save money?
Ah, but as Superior Court Presiding Judge Darryl Donohue put it at budget hearings late last month, “the devil is in the details.”
One detail is deciding which people won’t be performing which administrative functions anymore. Another detail is just who is going to be in charge of the joint administrative functions.
For more than 30 years, the V.I. law of the land was vested in a court which grew out of municipal courts, first named the Territorial Court and (as of 2004) renamed the Superior Court. Appeals went to the U.S. District Court.
Then the Virgin Islands Supreme Court was created by Act 6687 in 2004, and began operating in January 2007, effectively replacing U.S. District Court as the territory’s primary appellate court, and it was pretty clear that its presiding justice was to be the administrative head for all the Virgin Islands judiciary, Superior and Supreme Court. But later, the Legislature amended the law, and it wasn’t so clear anymore.
Now, backed by a comprehensive report by an independent group, there is a movement to consolidate the courts’ administration under an office that would be controlled by the Supreme Court, and to restore the intent of the original 2004 legislation.
With federal grant funding, the National Center for State Courts, a public benefit corporation whose purpose is to improve courts nationwide, conducted an extensive study of the V.I. courts. As part of its research, its authors interviewed 13 upper level staff at the Supreme Court and 26 at Superior Court, including all the judges in both courts, as well as the chief clerk of the U.S. District Court in the Virgin Islands. The NCSC issued its findings and recommendations in July.
Its first recommendation is “(the) creation of a judicial management advisory council as the principal internal policy body for the Virgin Islands Judicial Branch … Because this would be an advisory body, general superintending authority over administrative policies and practices of the Judicial Branch, as envisioned in Act 6687, should be restored to the Chief Justice through appropriate legislation.” The report points out that this is similar to the systems in the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Rhys Hodge referred to the report at his budget hearing before the Legislature in July, in the context of its recommendations for saving administrative costs.
The remarks struck a chord with several senators, and Sen. Donald Cole said he has requested legislative legal counsel to draft legislation to implement the change.
“In these hard economic times we are facing, whatever funding we can save (is important,)” Cole said in an interview last week.
Cole did not discuss why the original legislation may have been changed, saying only that he had not talked to the proponents of that move in the previous Legislature. But he’s not the first senator to try to rescind the change. Prior to this Legislature, he said there have been at least two previous attempts to amend the existing law.
He is expecting some opposition on this attempt, but he said he also thinks he’ll get some support in light of the fact that Hodge requested the change and that many senators are on record supporting attempts to save funds.
Saving money by consolidating doesn’t necessarily mean eliminating positions, Cole said. “I don’t see that there has to be a loss of jobs. The positions can be reallocated.”
The authors of the NCSC report put the eventual savings at between $1.5 and $1.8 million, but said there would be some increases in the short term. Specifically, they cited the creation of five new positions within the newly created office overseeing the consolidation: an administrator, human resources director, procurement officer, chief financial officer and chief marshal. Presumably people already on staff at one or the other court would move to the new office to fill all or most of the positions.
The short-term reductions NCSC envisioned come from eliminating the existing posts of the Supreme Court administrative director, the Superior Court administrator and assistant administrator, Superior Court human resources director and Supreme Court human resources manager, an assistant human resources manager, two procurement managers (one for each court) two CFO’s (one for each court) and two chief marshals (one for each court.) The salaries listed for those positions range from $88,241 to $149,917, with most of them in the six figures.
Besides the cost savings, among the benefits the NCSC says the consolidation will mean are the establishment of a “clear chain of command and authority,” increased organizational accountability and transparency, more effective collaboration between the two courts, and the development of “a single, consistent voice” for the judicial branch of government.
Cole said his bill should be ready sometime this month so he can introduce it and it can be assigned to committee. He’s projecting committee hearings on it before the end of the year, and anticipates judges and attorneys testifying.
But the word coming from Superior Court is: Not so fast.
Both Donohue and Judge Michael Dunstan, who is expected to become presiding judge when Donohue’s term on the bench ends later this year, are cautious about the proposed change.
“We’re prepared to work with (the Supreme Court) to find ways that we can save money,” Dunstan said in an interview last week, adding that the two entities have cooperated in many respects over the years.
But he said any proposal to make administrative changes to the Judicial Branch should be aired first by the Judicial Council, before going to the Legislature.
The council is an active body comprised of Supreme Court justices, two Superior Court judges (currently Donohue and Dunstan) and representatives from the Legislature, the Bar Association, the Attorney General’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office and Legal Services, Dunstan said.
“We meet quarterly,” he added.
When Donohue appeared at the Legislature for budget hearings, Cole tried to sound him out about the court consolidation, but, he said, Donohue told him it wasn’t the right venue to discuss it.
“That might have been the first salvo,” Cole said.
The National Center for State Courts report is available on the V.I. Supreme Court website at www.visupremecourt.org.
