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State of siege: Who'll pay court costs?

TALK ABOUT an overdue bill. For 22 years, the state has ignored orders to pay for local courts, leaving counties like Philadelphia stuck paying millions.

TALK ABOUT an overdue bill.

For 22 years, the state has ignored orders to pay for local courts, leaving counties like Philadelphia stuck paying millions.

It's a weird situation. The state Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the commonwealth should pay for a unified court system. But the Legislature and governors have just looked the other way.

And so far - while Philly's bills pile up - no one has blinked.

"It's a constitutional crisis," said Bruce Ledewitz, a law professor at Duquesne University. "You have two of the branches [of government] at loggerheads, and there's no one to say who's right and who's wrong."

An effort is under way to force the state to pay up. But after years of delays and inaction, is anything likely to change this time around?

"The reality is you need to have all players in state government pushing in the same direction," said Tom Darr, deputy administrator of the state Supreme Court.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania last year filed a suit asking the state Supreme Court to enforce rulings that say that the commonwealth should pay for district and county courts.

"It's been hanging for years," said Doug Hill, executive director of the association. "The court gave explicit instructions to the General Assembly: They were to take over funding and control from the counties."

That case is set to go before the high court in December. A number of counties have signed on in support, as has the local government watchdog group Committee of Seventy. The city of Philadelphia has not joined the action.

"We have not made a decision one way or another whether to join or not join," said Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety.

The state pays the salaries and benefits of county and district judges and some court administrators. But all other administrative and support costs are the responsibility of the counties.

In Philadelphia, the city shoulders county expenses. This year the state will pay about $20.5 million in salaries and benefits to 125 active judges and 14 court administrators in the First Judicial District. The city will spend $100 million - of its $3.8 billion general fund - on all the remaining staffing, administrative and maintenance costs for the Criminal Justice Center, the civil court in City Hall, Traffic Court, Family Court and Orphans Court.

Some of the city's court expenses are recovered through court fines and fees.

Over the years, Philly mayors have questioned whether the state will ever pick up those costs. Most recently, Mayor Nutter threatened to eliminate funding for the courts in August, when the city faced massive budget cuts.

"It's a huge amount of money," said Nutter last week. "Obviously, that's money we could use."

The battle over who should pay for local courts stretches from the 1987 state Supreme Court decision that said a unified state-funded system was the best way to provide equal access to courts across the state.

But that ruling has never been enforced. In 1996, retired Justice Frank J. Montemuro Jr. was assigned to study the issue and recommend how the state should take over the courts.

Montemuro submitted a four-phase plan for the takeover, but only the first phase - making court administrators and some deputy administrators state employees - was ever implemented.

The buck pretty much stopped there.

In court filings, the county commissioners acknowledge that seeking enforcement of a state Supreme Court ruling is unusual. They argue that it is rare because typically those rulings are respected.

"A constitutional form of government, with the traditional checks and balances . . . cannot and does not work properly if the pronouncements of one of those branches - the courts - can be ignored," reads a recent brief submitted by the county commissioners.

But the General Assembly, in its response to the commissioners' suit, argues that the courts should not dictate spending. They also hold that a "unified court system" does not require state funding.

Chief Justice Ron Castille has shared those views. In 1996, he wrote a dissent to the majority opinion on court funding, saying that the decision was the "very defnition of judicial tyranny."

Duquesne's Ledewitz said that Castille's position might influence the court in December.

"Chief Justice Castille might convince a majority of the court to finally abandon this effort," Ledewitz said. "I don't know if he will."

Ledewitz, who in the past has advised the state Senate Judiciary Committee to ignore the rulings, said that he thought it unlikely that the state would ever take over the courts. He cited the expense and questioned the reasoning of the original ruling.

"The idea that a court could order that level of spending is ridiculous," Ledewitz said. "This is a unique combination of a lot of money and a very weak theory and self- interest."

William Andring, chief counsel to the state House Judiciary Committee, said that he knew of no legislative plans to address court funding.

Gov. Rendell, who pushed for the state to pay court costs when he was Philadelphia's mayor, declined to discuss the issue, saying through a spokesman that it would be decided in the courts.

Gillison said that he'd just like to see the issue resolved one way or another.

"If that is not going to happen, I think the counties need to know," Gillison said. "We can't keep living in this netherworld. I really think that is more destabilizing in the long run, than it helps."

How court costs are paid differs from state to state, but in most cases a mix of state and county funding is used.

Several states have court systems that are almost entirely state funded, including Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Minnesota and California.