November 2009

The Legislature and Justice

by Senator Adam Kline

I’m writing to provide you with an update on legislative efforts to implement the recommendations of the 2004 Court Funding Task Force report. More importantly, I’m writing to ask your help, as I believe that lawyers are the public face of the justice system, and the people best placed to advocate for its improvement.

As a member of both the Board for Judicial Administration’s Court Funding Task Force and the Supreme Court’s Task Force on Civil Equal Justice Funding, I’ve been keenly aware of the challenges facing our trial courts, indigent defense systems — to the extent that we can call it a system — and civil legal aid for poor and vulnerable people. As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’ve spent the past four years working closely with representatives of the judicial branch, the Washington State Bar Association, public defenders, civil legal aid groups, cities, counties, and a wide range of stakeholders interested in implementing the goals of the 2004 Court Funding Task Force report and the resulting Justice in Jeopardy Initiative.

The fair and impartial administration of justice is a fundamental responsibility of government, one upon which the vitality of our democracy depends. Yes, there have been times when I despaired that only we lawyers truly understand that — but in the end, with a little nudging, most legislators understand in their hearts the importance of ensuring timely, fair, and effective civil and criminal justice. That is why we’ve generally developed bipartisan majorities to enact the policy changes and appropriations needed to implement the recommendations of the Court Funding Task Force.

The very first bill implementing the Court Funding Task Force was Senate Bill 5454, the Trial Court Improvement Act of 2005. This bill was jointly sponsored and steered through a tough legislative process by the former (now retired) ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Stephen Johnson, and me. This past session, the Republican Caucus chair, Senator Linda Evans Parlette, and I were successful in offering and securing bipartisan support for a key amendment to SB 5073, preserving the Legislature’s expressed intent that the state’s share of fee increases enacted in SB 5454 continue to be dedicated to the purposes outlined in that legislation even though the specific dedicated fund created in that bill, the Equal Justice Sub-Account, would be dissolved, and its funds rolled into the state general fund. Senators Parlette and Joseph Zarelli (the ranking Republican member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee) also joined me and Democratic Senators Debbie Regala and Joe McDermott in supporting a budget amendment to restore a substantial portion of the proposed cut to the civil legal aid budget during this past session.

From passage of the Trial Court Improvement Act through other key pieces of legislation, notably House Bill 1542 (establishing indigent defense standards and authorizing the Office of Public Defense to contract with local providers of indigent services to improve the quality of those services), HB 1747 (establishing the Office of Civil Legal Aid), HB 2176 (requiring courts to adopt language assistance plans and provide matching funds for the payment of interpreters), and HB 2903 (establishing the position of court access coordinator within the Administrative Office of the Courts), we’ve made significant improvements in the courts. In addition to enacting these policy bills, we’ve been successful in increasing state investment in our trial courts, indigent criminal defense, representation of indigent parents in dependency cases, and civil legal aid over the past four years. This, despite an unprecedented $9 billion budget shortfall and vastly differing philosophies on the approach to state budgeting generally.

From the outset, we understood that implementation of the Court Funding Task Force’s recommendations would require consistent effort over several budget cycles. Unfortunately, our efforts to maintain essential governmental services have taken a double whammy: first, the fiscal effect of two mindless tax-cutting initiatives that left us dependent on the retail sales tax, then more recently an economic crisis and corresponding plunge in volatile sales tax revenues. Counties, impoverished already by those same tax-cutting initiatives, have been forced to cut deeply, and because civil and criminal justice accounts for 65–70 percent of most counties’ expenditures, it is the courts, prosecutors, and jails that have suffered most. We at the state level have not had the resources to provide meaningful help, for the same two reasons. The result is that, despite our successes over the course of the past four years, justice remains in jeopardy — and the work to protect and enhance the capacity of our trial courts to fairly and efficiently administer justice is all that more urgent.

As chair of Judiciary, and in my new assignment as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, it is increasingly clear that the new budget realities facing our state demand that we be ever more creative in finding ways to achieve the substantive objectives of the Court Funding Task Force and the Justice in Jeopardy Initiative. And not just more creative — we need to be louder. Lawyers are the ones who can — and therefore must — speak out about the primacy of justice in state government. Yes, we legislators will rethink how we adjudicate certain types of cases, and continue to look for ways to streamline and scrimp and do without. We’ll maintain our efforts to ensure that the state of Washington becomes a meaningful co-investor with local government in the operations of our trial courts and court-related services such as indigent defense and civil legal aid. But you, as much as we, have the public’s ear on matters of justice. Your clients know you better than they know their legislators. As a lawyer, you, as much as we, are in a position to move public opinion. Together, we need to speak without reticence, because we understand that, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, “the first duty of society is justice.”

It continues to be my honor and joy to work on these issues, and I know you share that sentiment.

Adam Kline is Washington state senator for the 37th District and is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.