House Journal: Page 60: Wednesday, January 16, 2002
budget may threaten our ability to provide adequate court services. Although we are
aware of the other important demands being made upon you, we trust you will respond
to the needs of the judicial branch.
In the same spirit, I ask that when you are debating new laws, you carefully
consider the impact your actions have on the court system. Though well intentioned,
legislation nearly always adds to our workload. Adding responsibilities without
corresponding resources creates poor results.
Certainly, we understand that we need to be part of the overall solution for
reducing the cost of state government. We have several recommendations for
streamlining the court system that would help reduce costs and improve court services.
All require legislative approval.
First, we recommend that you eliminate unnecessary tasks. I’m not suggesting that
we stop hearing cases or drop important services, not at all. I’m suggesting we
streamline some procedures, eliminate obsolete or unnecessary practices, and, where
appropriate, shift some procedures to other agencies. We have a list of suggestions
along this line for your review.
For instance, why are the courts involved in cemetery management or required to
have a 24-hour probate court? Perhaps this made sense in the early years of the last
century, but it does not make sense today. Someone once said: "There is nothing more
useless than doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." This is sound
advice. Let’s follow it and get rid of the needless work.
We also recommend a statutory change that would give the Court authority to
determine the structure of the judicial districts. The configuration of the judicial
districts has not been changed in thirty years. Although the judicial council’s plan
proposed reducing the number of districts from eight to five, we have not adopted that
plan or any other. Further, there would be an opportunity for public participation
before we would act on proposals for change.
By reorganizing the judicial districts, we could gain a significant improvement: a
better allocation of our existing judicial resources. Preliminary results of a recent
study by the National Center for State Courts indicate that Iowa has enough judges
statewide; however, some districts have more judges than they need, and some have
less than they need. By redrawing the districts, we can correct that imbalance.
We also believe that we can reduce some of our administrative costs by reducing the
number of districts. If we had fewer districts, we would need fewer managers.
Finally, we recommend a statutory change that would eliminate the mandate that
there be a clerk of court official in every county. If this were done, we could use one
clerk of court to manage several small offices. The Court does not have a specific plan
in mind for reducing the number of clerks; however, we ask for authority to determine
our staffing levels - including our management staffing levels. Let me make clear that
this would not affect the presence of a clerk of court office in each county, which we will
continue to maintain.
Our request to eliminate the mandate is based simply on our desire for more
flexible management. Good management does not require that we have 99 managers.
© 2002 Cornell College and
League of Women Voters of Iowa
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