Chief justice warns cuts put courts at risk

Problems could range from long delays for hearings to get protective orders in family court to less court oversight of troubled youth to routine business taking months rather than weeks as courthouses are forced to eliminate workers.

“In my judgment, justice is in jeopardy in Massachusetts,’’ she said at her annual address to the legal community in downtown Boston. “These are strong words, and I use them with care.’’

For the first time in Marshall’s decade as chief justice, she focused her talk on a single topic and struck an unusually foreboding and political tone.

In sharply worded remarks before about 150 lawyers, Marshall said a $50 million budget cut over the past year had left the system understaffed and increasingly unable to provide “prompt, effective justice.’’

“The delivery of justice is, of necessity, people-intensive, and the need for justice does not diminish with a shrinking economy,’’ she said. “Courts do not have the luxury of taking a breather while the financial markets sort themselves out.’’

Marshall’s address followed Governor Deval Patrick’s recent announcement that as many as 2,000 state jobs could be eliminated to help close a $600 million budget shortfall. In the first quarter of the fiscal year, tax revenues came in $212 million below projections, the fourth time in a year they have come in lower than expected.

Cyndi Roy, a spokeswoman for the state’s budget office, said additional cuts were inevitable, given slumping tax collections. Patrick will provide more details about spending reductions next week, she said, after determining the best way to save money.

“No cut he is reviewing is an easy cut,’’ she said.

The administration reduced the state budget by more than $1 billion in the past fiscal year, she said.

Last October, the judiciary’s budget declined by $22 million, forcing a hiring freeze, shelving raises to low-pay administrative employees, and reducing the use of independent contract workers such as court-appointed guardians.

Marshall said the budget reductions were disproportionate to those at other state agencies and urged the legal community to lobby state lawmakers for relief.

“The question now is whether, under further severe constraints, our courts can operate effectively at all,’’ she said.

It was not the first time Marshall brought herself into the budget process. In April, she aggressively lobbied against Patrick’s plan to cut the trial courts budget by 4 percent, saying it would result in large-scale layoffs that would hobble the court system.

Since July, the trial court system has lost 570 employees, reducing the total to under 7,000.

“When it takes six to eight weeks longer to appear before a Probate and Family Court judge with a complaint for nonpayment of child support, families teeter on the edge of disaster,’’ she said. “When Juvenile Court probation officers are pulled from the Boston public schools because staff reductions require them to be elsewhere, we lose a deterrent to delinquency and crime, and we are all less safe.

“I cannot, I shall not, ignore that our courts are at a moment of peril,’’ she added.

The state will be forced to close more courthouses without more generous funding, she said.

In February, a Boston Bar Association task force concluded that last fall’s budget cuts had frozen hiring for key positions, reduced services for needy residents, and adversely affected the efficiency of court proceedings.

Further budget cuts, the report stated, would seriously threaten the delivery of justice in Massachusetts. It also said: “The burdens of inadequate funding have fallen and will continue to fall disproportionately upon the Commonwealth’s most disadvantaged residents and upon court employees who already bear the weight of understaffing.’’

Cutting the trial courts budget threatens to reverse gains in processing cases, the association found.

The judiciary accounts for just over 2 percent of total state spending.