Judiciary Calls for Funding to Maintain Course
The federal courts have asked Congress to provide a fiscal year 2007 appropriation sufficient to build on the gains achieved in FY 2006, or risk re-creating the funding problems of past years.
“The federal Judiciary is approaching a crossroads in fiscal year 2007,” Judge Julia Gibbons (6th Cir.), chair of the Judicial Conference Budget Committee, said in a House appropriations hearing in early April 2006. “With the gains you helped us achieve in FY 2006, we are on the brink of setting a new course that will restore the financial health of the federal court system. But it will take the resources we seek in our FY 2007 budget request to accomplish that goal and to avoid a repeat of the staffing losses that occurred in FY 2004 and FY 2005.”
Gibbons appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, District of Columbia and Independent Agencies, with Director of the Administrative Office Leonidas Ralph Mecham. Gibbons noted that this was Director Mecham’s final appearance at an appropriations hearing. The longest serving director of the AO, Mecham has announced his retirement. Both Subcommittee Chair Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Ranking Minority Member John W. Olver (D-MA) congratulated Mecham on his many years of service to the federal Judiciary.
The Judiciary is requesting $6.26 billion for FY 2007, a 9.4 percent overall increase above FY 2006 available appropriations, and an 8.3 percent increase for the courts’ Salaries and Expenses account. Funding requirements essentially reflect basic operating costs, predominantly for personnel and space requirements. Of the $540 million increase requested for FY 2007, a total of $462 million, or 86 percent of the requested increase, represents must-pay items such as pay and benefit increases, space rental increases, panel attorney payments, and general inflationary increases for Judiciary programs. Read more at uscourts.gov
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