Hiring freeze, 4-month judge vacancies OK’d

Listen to this article

A hiring freeze was imposed on the state’s Judicial Branch last week, and a four-month Great Recession-era mandate for holding open judicial posts was revived.

The Minnesota Judicial Council approved both measures during an emergency meeting on April 24. They are meant to help prepare the judiciary for possible budget cuts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both went into effect Monday.

Supreme Court Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson told Judicial Council members Friday that a conversation he recently had with two unnamed legislators left him concerned that a budget-cutting special legislative session will come after the regular session ends on May 18. “And it is probably sooner rather than later,” he said.

The hiring freeze and four-month vacancy mandate each passed with a lone no vote from Hennepin County District Court Judge Lois Regnier Conroy, who was filling in as the Minnesota District Judges Association’s representative to the council.

The Judicial Council will reevaluate its decisions in June, after members have had time to digest a much-anticipated Minnesota Management and Budget economic forecast update, due in early May.

Ten previous budget guidelines—a possible overtime freeze, temporary-employee reductions and potential voluntary separations among them—were approved during the Judicial Council’s March 16 meeting.

Hiring freeze

The statewide hiring freeze is in effect at all levels of the judiciary, from county trial courts to the Minnesota Supreme Court. It does not affect current employees’ promotions or transfers—though any resulting vacancy would be subject to the freeze.

The Judicial Council also approved a freeze-exception process that, in limited instances, could allow critical positions to be filled by new employees. That process will be managed by a Judicial Council Hiring Freeze Subcommittee, chaired by 3rd Judicial District Chief Judge Jodi L. Williamson.

The hiring freeze does not undo any job offers already extended and accepted before Monday. Offers extended but not yet accepted may be honored, withdrawn or postponed at the discretion of the relevant District, Appellate or State Court administrator.

But other prospective hires must be reviewed and an exception granted before that job can be filled.

“It would have to stopped, reviewed and go through exception process,” said Dana Bartocci, the branch’s director of Human Resources and Development. “Because if we don’t start taking action now, later on it could be worse action.”

Any request to hire a new court worker must first be submitted to local court administration. If approved, the request goes to Williamson’s Judicial Council subcommittee. If that panel also approves, it needs final signoff from Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea.

Though a number of Judicial Council members expressed regret about the freeze, most verbally supported it.

“Planning is the sensible thing to do,” said 10th Judicial District Chief Judge Douglas B. Meslow. “Now is the time that we can save for a rainy day. I just think this is prudent.”

But Conroy was unswayed, saying the COVID-19 emergency means that an avalanche of backlogged cases will soon be dropped on the desks of district court judges and their clerks.

“My concern about the hiring freeze is that we may be not filling judge positions or clerk positions in areas where we don’t need less work, we need more work,” she said. “I don’t know how we address the avalanche that is coming without that.”

Both of Friday’s measures were adopted at a time when access to the courts has been curbed and case backlogs already are mounting. Meslow said it is likely that sometime in 2021, courts will be “running almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week” to catch up.

Still, Tim Ostby, the 7th Judicial District’s court administrator, sees the hiring freeze as necessary to avoiding layoffs of existing staff.

“I would anticipate that we will suffer some budget cuts in next biennium, if not in fiscal year 2021,” Ostby told the council. “The more staff vacancies we have going forward, that will put us in a better position to deal with whatever cuts are coming. If we don’t have cuts and the next biennium is fine, then we can hire positions back.”

The Judicial Council declared on April 16 that avoiding staff layoffs is its top budgeting principle in the face of possible funding cuts.

Mandatory vacancies

The idea behind the four-month mandatory judicial vacancies, Gildea said, is to share with judges the pain that inevitably will be felt by court employees during the hiring freeze.

Hennepin County Chief Judge Ivy Bernhardson voted for the requirement, but worried it will cause problems. Already, she said, Hennepin County is short about six judges. (Bernhardson is herself retiring in June.)

“Couple that with the tsunami of cases that is going to start coming at us and it puts us in an impossible position to be able to handle the workload,” she said. “That troubles me a great deal.”

Nonetheless, a proposal to carve out an exception process for mandatory judge vacancies was rejected as cumbersome and unworkable statewide.

Williamson said there might be ways to make the mandatory vacancies less onerous, however. For instance, she said, if judges are shared across districts and utilize technology to do that work remotely, some of the worst impacts might be reduced.

Chief Judge Dwayne N. Knutsen of the 8th District agreed. “The technology we are able to use now to do hearings remotely can help us to balance workload out,” he said. “So I am really not afraid of having a vacancy for a period of time.”

But Conroy vigorously opposed the move and voted no. She suggested that budget cuts might be OK in some areas, but holding judicial slots open for months at a time would be a mistake, because it would forestall justice for some Minnesotans.

“Cases cannot move without judges,” Conroy said. “Maybe there are other opportunities for savings—maybe it’s a project or maybe it’s a staff person who doesn’t determine cases. But judges are what get cases done. I don’t know how we do this work without them.”

Backdrop

While courts are fully funded for now, budget cuts are widely thought possible—if not likely—in part because emergency COVID-19 spending at the Capitol has already exceeded $550 million and further emergency spending is possible. Meanwhile, tax revenues are expected to plummet because of the high unemployment and widespread business closures prompted by the pandemic.

The state has received almost $2 billion in federal stimulus money to help offset the pandemic’s effects, and some of that might offset the earlier state emergency expenditures. But much still hinges on MMB’s revised state economic forecast, which is due as early as next week.

However, Dan Ostdiek, the Judicial Branch’s finance director, said he isn’t counting on the MMB forecast to provide many answers, because it’s likely to include only “high-level” projections without much detail.

He noted that the state’s economic consultants, IHS Markit, have already projected a 5.5% decrease in gross domestic product over the next three quarters. The Great Recession of 2008, which lasted about four years, saw a 4.3% GDP tumble over three comparable quarters, he said.

If a serious recession arrives and the courts’ 2022-23 biennial budget gets cut by 5%, he said, it could mean $18.7 million a year in lost funding—about 200 full-time equivalent court employees. A 10% cut could cost 400 full-time workers, he said.

Ostdiek’s own bet is that the COVID-19 recession will not be a short one, he said.

“When you have a U.S. Senator [Majority Leader Mitch McConnell] saying that the states should consider filing for bankruptcy, I think that is a pretty good indication that things are pretty bleak,” he said.

“I think it’s in the branch’s best interest that we prepare for potential budget reductions,” Ostdiek said.