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Sandra Cox is a 27-year veteran of Ford County District Court, yet she makes less than $29,000 a year.
A traffic clerk, Cox relies on her son to help pay her utility bills because she can't afford to cover them on top of her house and car payments. She has grown accustomed to scrimping and saving over the years, sacrificing luxuries to make ends meet.
So when Cox learned that classified court employees might be forced to take unpaid leave next year, she realized that she could see a major cut in pay.
That was when she started hunting for a second job.
"I was very mad, because we are one of the hardest-working people in the court system, and we get paid the least," Cox told the Globe on Friday. "We do more than just our job — we help everybody else do their job."
Cox said she hasn't found a second job yet, but she's still looking.
"I can't keep letting my son help me," she said. "He's got a family now of his own, and it shouldn't be up to him."
Furloughs
Court officials across the state are bracing for the possibility that the Kansas Supreme Court will order unpaid furloughs for classified employees, which covers everyone in the judicial branch except judges.
If the furloughs are implemented, each classified employee would have to take one week of unpaid leave for each month of fiscal year 2010. The furloughs would begin Jan. 1 and continue through June.
"If such furloughs are inevitable, then they will be most painless if spaced evenly over the entire fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009," Chief Justice Robert Davis said in a May 11 letter to judicial branch employees. "But we cannot know now that they are inevitable.
"If the Legislature and governor act quickly next January, they may be avoided. If, on the other hand, furloughs become necessary and none are taken in the first few months of the fiscal year, more will have to be taken in the final months."
Davis said the court is not ordering furloughs yet but may implement them if the Legislature doesn't act quickly in January.
Sixteenth Judicial District Judge Dan Love said that furloughs for classified employees could hurt the court's ability to manage cases efficiently. He said the court has nine clerks who handle nearly 700 cases apiece each year, not including traffic cases.
"It's clear from looking at these statistics that for us to close this courthouse down and handle all the cases would be an extreme burden and virtually impossible in light of this caseload," he said.
Furloughs would be even more painful for courthouses in smaller counties like Meade, which is also part of the 16th Judicial District.
Meade County Court Clerk Kristen Branson said she has only two clerks — herself and her deputy. So if the state Supreme Court orders furloughs for classified employees, the Meade court might have to close down for several days at a time, she said.
"I have asked that and as of now, I don't think it's been completely clear as to how they would do that," Branson said. "Reading between the lines in some of the e-mails I have received, I am thinking that yes, the court may just be closed for a week at a time.
"So if someone wanted to pay a speeding ticket, there wouldn't even be anyone here to handle that."
Sandra Cox is a 27-year veteran of Ford County District Court, yet she makes less than $29,000 a year.
A traffic clerk, Cox relies on her son to help pay her utility bills because she can't afford to cover them on top of her house and car payments. She has grown accustomed to scrimping and saving over the years, sacrificing luxuries to make ends meet.
So when Cox learned that classified court employees might be forced to take unpaid leave next year, she realized that she could see a major cut in pay.
That was when she started hunting for a second job.
"I was very mad, because we are one of the hardest-working people in the court system, and we get paid the least," Cox told the Globe on Friday. "We do more than just our job — we help everybody else do their job."
Cox said she hasn't found a second job yet, but she's still looking.
"I can't keep letting my son help me," she said. "He's got a family now of his own, and it shouldn't be up to him."
Furloughs
Court officials across the state are bracing for the possibility that the Kansas Supreme Court will order unpaid furloughs for classified employees, which covers everyone in the judicial branch except judges.
If the furloughs are implemented, each classified employee would have to take one week of unpaid leave for each month of fiscal year 2010. The furloughs would begin Jan. 1 and continue through June.
"If such furloughs are inevitable, then they will be most painless if spaced evenly over the entire fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009," Chief Justice Robert Davis said in a May 11 letter to judicial branch employees. "But we cannot know now that they are inevitable.
"If the Legislature and governor act quickly next January, they may be avoided. If, on the other hand, furloughs become necessary and none are taken in the first few months of the fiscal year, more will have to be taken in the final months."
Davis said the court is not ordering furloughs yet but may implement them if the Legislature doesn't act quickly in January.
Sixteenth Judicial District Judge Dan Love said that furloughs for classified employees could hurt the court's ability to manage cases efficiently. He said the court has nine clerks who handle nearly 700 cases apiece each year, not including traffic cases.
"It's clear from looking at these statistics that for us to close this courthouse down and handle all the cases would be an extreme burden and virtually impossible in light of this caseload," he said.
Furloughs would be even more painful for courthouses in smaller counties like Meade, which is also part of the 16th Judicial District.
Meade County Court Clerk Kristen Branson said she has only two clerks — herself and her deputy. So if the state Supreme Court orders furloughs for classified employees, the Meade court might have to close down for several days at a time, she said.
"I have asked that and as of now, I don't think it's been completely clear as to how they would do that," Branson said. "Reading between the lines in some of the e-mails I have received, I am thinking that yes, the court may just be closed for a week at a time.
"So if someone wanted to pay a speeding ticket, there wouldn't even be anyone here to handle that."
Budget cuts
When Kansas lawmakers devised a budget proposal for fiscal year 2010, the House proposed a 5 percent reduction in state spending across the board in addition to targeted cuts. Meanwhile, the Senate recommended reducing state spending by 2.75 percent, plus an $11 million cut in spending specifically for the judicial branch.
The Senate apparently assumed that the courts could offset the $11 million cut by raising docket fees for certain cases, but that assumption was wrong, Davis said.
"In fact, the surcharge approved in earlier legislation is limited in the types of filings in which it may be assessed and is capped at $10 per fee," he said in the May 11 letter. "There is no way that it can cover the additional cut."
Lawmakers finished work on the budget and left Topeka in early May without providing additional funding for the court system.
Davis said the judicial branch will take steps to offset the impact of the cut in funding, but court officials are still anticipating an $8.1 million shortfall.
Rep. Pat George said the Legislature could fix the problem in one of two ways. If the state decides that emergency action is warranted, the Legislative Coordinating Council — a group of House and Senate leaders — could approve additional funding for the judicial branch without waiting for the Legislature to convene in January.
In the second scenario, the Legislature could approve supplemental funding for the courts when the 2010 session begins, midway through the fiscal year.
George said he thought approving additional money for the judicial branch in January would be the best way of fixing the problem.
"There would be plenty of money in the budget to get through to January," he said. "We'd kind of be at a halfway point, and there's certainly a willingness amongst the leaders to restore that funding."
'Extremely worried'
Ford County District Court employees were upset when they learned that the state was considering furloughs for classified staffers, District Judge Love said.
"Everyone in this office was extremely worried," he said. "We had clerks indicating they had no choice but to look either for other work or for second jobs."
Sandra Cox, the traffic court clerk, said she learned about the possible furloughs early this week and was still upset on Friday.
"How can they cut the people that make the least money that work in the court system?" she said. "I don't understand that. I don't understand their thinking even of thinking of doing something like this."
Nevertheless, Cox said she hoped that lawmakers would fix the problem. She said she thought local judges and attorneys should take up the cause, because furloughs for classified employees would affect them as well.
"The attorneys need to be fighting for us, and they need to be fighting for us to make more wages — a better wage," she said.
Reach Eric Swanson at (620) 408-9917 or e-mail him at eric.swanson@dodgeglobe.com.
