The House Committee on Finance heard a budget presentation from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals for the first time Friday morning.
This is the first budget hearing from the state Supreme Court since the passage of Constitutional Amendment 2, which allows for legislative oversight over how the state Supreme Court spends its money.
Chief Justice Beth Walker presented the court’s budget for the 2020 fiscal year, which was held constant with Gov. Jim Justice’s budget recommendations.
Walker first gave the committee an outline of how the court system in West Virginia operates with a detailed list of employee numbers across the state courts for the fiscal year of 2018. Personal services make up 80 percent of the court’s budget. The appropriations for the fiscal year of 2019 equaled about $139.9 million.
Walker proposed her budget for the fiscal year of 2020, which requests $131,150,000 in total general revenue. Most of this will be used to pay employees within the Court, and help establish guardian ad litems, guardians, and mental hygiene commissioners throughout the state. A chunk of this will also be used to help provide the computer equipment needed to counties implementing the new CourtPLUS e-filing software, which is due to be fully implemented within the state by 2021.
Walker also unveiled the new financial policies that the West Virginia Supreme Court will be utilizing this year to increase transparency for the agency. These new policies include more oversight over travel and use of state vehicles, the acceptable use of court information systems, and purchasing cards to track fixed court assets.
“We see this presentation as the beginning of the partnership between the judiciary and the legislative body of this state,” Walker said. “We want the public to be confident that we’re being transparent and straight-forward.”
A lot of the delegates’ questions focused on the possibility of an intermediate court in West Virginia. The current budget doesn’t account for the existence of one. Senate Bill 2, a major piece of legislation for this session, would create an Intermediate Appellate Court for the state. This would help to alleviate the case load on the existing state courts.
Although West Virginia Supreme Court has not taken an official position on the proposed bill, Walker briefly addressed the subject in the budget hearing.
“The state constitution has vested the power within this body of government to decide if this is what’s best for the state,” Walker said. “We do want to be a part of the conversation if it does pass.”
A major concern for the West Virginia Supreme Court is the alarming increase of abuse and neglect cases that their court sees. Walker stated that out of the 937 cases filed in the past year, the vast majority of those were domestic abuse and neglect case. She said that these cases have increased 54 percent in the state of West Virginia in the past year. Walker said the Supreme Court was assisting the state courts who hear these cases by providing continuing education for their employees and administrative support for difficult cases that they may face.
Walker concluded the presentation and maintained that the justices, which were all present during the committee meeting, are committed to transparency and cooperation with the legislature.
Delegate Isaac Sponaugle, D-Pendleton, proceeded to address “the elephant in the room.”
“The elephant in the room is that we impeached essentially an entire branch of government last year,” Sponaugle said. “That being said, I greatly appreciate the transparency efforts that you all have made by presenting this. It’s great that you’re going to be working with us.”
Walker addressed this by pointing to an allegorical storm.
“After a storm, you have to figure out how to repair. We’ve assessed the damage, and now we are committed to those repairs,” Walker said.
