Candidate proposes budget cuts

July 22, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor, a candidate for chief justice, announced a plan Wednesday to reduce the court budget by 10 percent by freezing salaries and hiring and making other spending cuts to help solve Ohio’s looming budget hole.

O’Connor outlined her proposal in a 6-page letter sent to a legislative committee studying how to close a gap expected to range from $4 billion to $8 billion.

She said some pain would be required. Her proposal would impose a partial hiring freeze thatwould allow positions to disappear to attrition unless filling them could be justified as meeting an immediate need.

She said freezing salaries is required to meet the $1.25 million in personnel cuts contained in her plan, despite court workers receiving no cost-of-living increases for the past two years.

Her proposal also includes $3 million in cuts to the Ohio Courts Network, a $200,000 reduction to the state law library budget, and a two-year salary freeze for court employees.

At a news conference, O’Connor said she would appoint an advisory committee to identify further spending cuts in the court system to close the hole.

O’Connor, a former county prosecutor and lieutenant governor, equated the problem to the BP oil spill.

“Both are silent, largely unseen catastrophes that lie under the surface but portend looming disaster,” she said. “Both situations seem to have more people interested in shifting blame than finding a fix. In both disasters, no one can tell us in specific, empirical terms exactly how bad it is.”

O’Connor, a Republican, faces recently appointed Chief Justice Eric Brown in the November election. The chief guides the court budget process with input from the other justices.

In a statement, Brown called O’Connor’s budget announcement “unfortunate,” saying it would have been more appropriate for her to work through administrative channels to share her ideas rather than submitting them directly to the Legislature.

“In recent years, it has been the practice of the court on such matters to speak with one voice,” Brown said. “That one voice is that of the Chief Justice and is usually done only after consulting with the other justices and after a thorough administrative review including consultation with and input from court staff.”

O’Connor said she was acting as any other citizen is able to do by going straight to lawmakers.

Many of the cost reductions in O’Connor’s plan could be achieved by going digital with the court’s extensive publications, archiving and education functions.

She said $50,000 can be cut from court printing costs by distributing press releases, reports and other documents electronically and offering lawyer training online.

Her plan calls for trimming $200,000 spent on book purchases and subscriptions from the budget of the law library, which maintains one of the largest collections of its kind in the country.

O’Connor said the need to maintain hard copies is dissipating.

O’Connor said $1.5 million that can be saved in facilities costs at the renovated court building in downtown Columbus would begin with simple steps such as moving to high-efficiency light bulbs or turning down the heat, in streamlining the maintenance schedule, and renegotiating service contracts.