Judicial Council continues quest for budget money

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The Wisconsin Judicial Council has filed a budget request asking for a staff attorney and an office in the state’s 2022 budget year.

The nonpartisan 21-member body — made up of judges, lawmakers, lawyers and other stakeholders in the legal system — has been operating without staff and a budget for years.

The council lost its staff attorney and budget in the state 2017-19 budget. Gov. Scott Walker then struck budgetary language that would have allowed the Wisconsin Supreme Court to provide money to the council.

The council requested $200,700 in 2018 to hire a new attorney and pay for expenses, but Gov. Tony Evers did not include money for the council in his budget either.

Bill Gleisner, the council’s chairman, submitted the proposed 2021-23 biennial budget to the Department of Administration on Tuesday, and council members discussed the request during a meeting on Friday.

Adam Plotkin, the chairman of the council’s budget committee, said he requested $65,000 for the attorney’s salary for one year. The attorney would start on July 1, 2022 — the first day of the second year of the biennium.

“It reduces the overall cost by delaying the cost, which is how we were trying to be cognizant of the pandemic’s impact on the budget,” Plotkin said.

He also requested $22,600 to cover the cost of an office space, desk and phone for the staff attorney. Plotkin originally had asked the director of state courts if the council could share the courts’ space, but the court said no.

Plotkin said there wasn’t much explanation about why the court wouldn’t support what was essentially an in-kind donation request, but said the director of state courts had provided a letter from 2017 in which the court said it was declining to continue funding the council.

Plotkin said he was hesitant to interpret the motives behind such a short email, but “attaching that order suggests there’s some service recovery work that needs to be done by the council.”

The members discussed setting up a meeting with Chief Justice Patience Roggensack to rekindle the council’s relationship with the court, including asking her to appoint a justice to the council.

The council also talked about taking over writing jury instructions. UW Law School now draws up the instructions but doesn’t plan to continue doing so.

The discussion about jury instructions quickly turned back to the council’s lack of budget — with members expressing concern that the council didn’t have the staff to take on such a large project. Follow @WLJReporter