Budget shifts judicial power

Massachusetts lawmakers have created a budget that sharply curbs the powers of state court administrators to manage local courthouses, a move that critics say will strengthen the lawmakers' control over patronage.

At the insistence of the House, the lawmakers stripped the powers of Chief Justice Robert Mulligan to transfer money and staff among the courts, a key tool that some say is fundamental to ensuring the smooth operations of the state's court system. The language had been carried in the appropriation bill for the past several years but was removed in the current spending plan.

At the same time, the Legislature, in the $23.9 billion budget plan it sent Governor Mitt Romney last week, restored nearly $1.5 million to the accounts for the commissioner of probation, John J. O'Brien, a close ally of House leaders. The funds would allow O'Brien to hire as many as 30 new probation officers, restoring the money that Mulligan had diverted from O'Brien's office over the past year to various courts that needed the cash, according to lawmakers who spoke on the condition they not be identified.

To soften the blow, the state spending plan provides modest increases to the budgets of each of the courts. Massachusetts is the only state where the Legislature sets strict funding levels for each courthouse.

The Legislature's moves provoked little public opposition from the judiciary, which is focused on a request for a $34,000-a-year pay raise for the state's 370 judges over the next two years. Judges have not seen their $112,777 salaries increase in five years, placing Massachusetts near the bottom of the scale when compared with jurists in other states.

Legal observers say that the judges do not want to strain relations with Beacon Hill any further. A hearing on the pay raise bill is scheduled for tomorrow.

''This is a very delicate time for courts and judges," said David L. Yas, editor in chief of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

House leaders say they insisted on stripping the language that gives Mulligan powers over the budget because House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi strongly opposes the use of budget language to set policy. Some lawmakers fought the effort to strip Mulligan's powers.

In interviews last week, lawmakers point out that a bill to give the courts the power to move funds and personnel is currently in the judiciary committee. But some lawmakers and advocates for reform doubt that the bill will emerge. ''That battle has already been fought and the House won," said one advocate working with the judges. A lawmaker who fought for the budget langauge said, ''It is a dead issue."

DiMasi's spokesperson said Friday neither the speaker nor members of his leadership would comment. A spokesman for Mulligan said the chief justice would not comment about the budget. O'Brien did not return a call seeking his comment.

The House's push to add probation jobs is seen by critics as part of its leadership's attempts to micromanage the court system. The House also added language to the budget ordering the state to create a court in Belchertown, which is represented by the House speaker pro tem, Representative Thomas M. Petrolati, a Democrat from Ludlow.

Petrolati is a close ally of O'Brien's and widely known on Beacon Hill for finding courthouse jobs in Hampden County for supporters. His wife, Kathleen, was hired by O'Brien's office as a $63,000-a-year probation officer assigned to the Springfield District Court. Representative Petrolati did not respond to a request for an interview.

Kathleen Petrolati heads the Springfield court's bracelet program for parolees. The House added $2 million to the probation budget to implement a statewide global positioning system that would track parolees via ankle bracelets.

The Legislature's move comes amid increasing tension between the House leadership and Mulligan. Last fall, DiMasi cut off communications with Mulligan after the justice ignored his suggestion that he reappoint Superior Court Judge Suzanne DelVecchio as chief justice of the superior courts, according to sources in the legislative leadership.

The Legislature's budget also ignores reforms proposed in 2003 by a special commission headed by Boston College's chancellor, the Rev. J. Donald Monan. The panel recommended that the courts be run with less interference from lawmakers who are cutting what it said was ''backroom deals."

''Legislative leaders should commit to a streamlined budget process that allows the courts to deploy resources, so long as they do so according to demonstrated workload," the commission report stated. Another recent report prepared by the National Center For State Courts makes similar recommendations.

Yas said the latest move to strip Mulligan of the power to deploy resources is a major setback. ''Taking away Mulligan's control really threatens to make a bad situation worse," he said. ''He has been trying to send out a good signal for the judiciary in the hope of getting more money for courthouses and for judicial pay raises and control over the court's budget."

A study in 2001 by a former district court judge, James W. Dolan, for the fiscally conservative think tank Pioneer Institute, found that lawmakers had in recent years created 382 positions the judiciary never sought, costing taxpayers $48.3 million.

Several Supreme Judicial Court rulings in the past several years, including those backing gay marriage and the Clean Elections Law, have strained the relationship between the Legislature and the judiciary.