Circuit court judges in Milwaukee aren’t happy with Gov. Scott Walker’s new approach to funding the court system which, they say, provides barely enough money to cover bare-bones operations.
At a forum in Milwaukee this week, Walker’s legal counsel Brian Hagedorn defended the approach, which gives the state Supreme Court a pot of money and lets them decide which programs to spend it on.
“We have unshackled the courts from the ‘Mother, may I,’ approach to budgeting,” Hagedorn said. “So instead of coming to us and just saying ‘We need X, we didn’t get it,’ or ‘Go blame the governor, go blame the Legislature,’ now the question is go talk to the Supreme Court.”
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But Milwaukee Chief Judge Jeffrey Kremers said having the power to decide where to spend the money doesn’t help if there’s not enough money to go around.
“If you don’t give us enough money to do all the things that we need to do then you haven’t really unshackled us,” he said.
Kremers said the current approach will make it hard to expand treatment and diversion programs which, he said, have saved the state money by keeping people out of prison.
Kremers said while the courts have operated those programs, the savings have gone to the Department of Corrections. He would like to see some of that money reinvested in system, creating more treatment courts.
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