The Arkansas Supreme Court building in Little Rock. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
Arkansas lawmakers sent a report Monday to the governor, legislative leaders and the Arkansas Supreme Court recommending a variety of changes to how the state’s court system is funded.
The Joint Judiciary Committee approved the report with no discussion, but two weeks ago members agreed that next year’s legislative session should include a proposal to eliminate the $10 monthly fee that comes with paying off court-ordered fines and fees, such as traffic tickets, on an installment plan.
Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock
The fee results in lower-income people paying a higher cumulative amount than people who can afford to pay up front, and lawmakers of both parties have said this is unfair.
“The most offensive part of it is that we use the installment fee to fund aspects of the judicial branch, like courtroom technology, that we as a legislative body ought to be funding,” Sen. Clarke Tucker, a Little Rock Democrat on the committee, said in an interview Monday.
One-fourth of the fee revenue supports local district courts’ automated record-keeping system, one-fourth supports the same thing at the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts and the remaining half goes into the state’s Administration of Justice (AOJ) fund, the report states.
The report proposes the Legislature find alternative funding sources for all of the above. It also recommends a study of the AOJ fund, which was created in 1995 and now funds 21 “programs or entities.” Some of them “only have vague connections to the state court system,” according to the report.
“[The AOJ fund] was meant to collect data on what a statewide system with uniform fees and costs would cost to maintain,” the report states. “However, in the past 30 years, instead of using the data from that fund to make policy decisions about how to fund the justice system, the fund has been used simply to fund the justice system… The [Judiciary] Committees should consider eliminating unnecessary and unrelated entities and programs from the State Administration of Justice Fund.”
The report also recommends that lawmakers “eliminate the cost-sharing requirement of state district judge salaries with cities and counties.”
Cities and counties currently pay about $4 million of district judges’ salaries, since the state cannot support them entirely, Rep. Carol Dalby, R-Texarkana, and Arkansas Association of Counties chief legal counsel Mark Whitmore said on Sept. 9.
Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch
“Getting the state to pay these salaries [is] a big deal because a lot of these counties are struggling,” said Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, who co-chairs the joint committee with Dalby.
Other recommendations include creating a digital platform to automatically notify people of their upcoming court dates and requiring cities and counties to retain 50% of district court revenue and send the other half to the state.
The joint committee finalized the report in accordance with Act 38 of 2023, which authorized “a legislative study of financial matters related to the court system” and the required notification of state officials by Oct. 1.
The 2025 legislative session will begin in January, and lawmakers will be allowed to start filing bills in November.
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