Superior Court seeks $300K for additional personnel • But Rep. Reyes eyes merging of operations with Supreme Court to pare down expenses

Amid increasing number of lawsuits filed in local courts over the past year, the judiciary is understaffed and ill-equipped to handle the growing caseloads, which may curtail the delivery of vital services to the community.

But the Commonwealth does not have the money to infuse more funds into the Supreme Court and the Superior Court to hire additional personnel as well as buy new computers, compounding the present problems facing the judicial branch.

Superior Court Judge Edward Manibusan told the House Ways and Means Committee during a budget hearing Friday that the government must appropriate at least $300,000 for the next fiscal year to afford badly-needed employees.

The proposed budget hike would allow the courts to fill in 27 positions that have been left vacant for the last two years following the austerity measures implemented by Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio to boost savings of the government.

“We need to fill those positions,” Manibusan said at the hearing. “Our personnel are overburdened (with the workload) and overused. It just makes way for inefficiency.”

For instance, the Superior Court has not had a chief probation officer since last year to oversee more than 2,300 people on probation because there is no budget for the managerial post.

House Majority Floor Leader Ana S. Teregeyo believed the position must be filled in for FY 2000 to assist the court in handling the probation program, urging for other members of the committee to seek ways to fund at least $40,000 needed for his salary.

According to Manibusan, they just wanted the administration to reinstate funding for the total of 69 personnel who will run the operations of the Superior Court. This was the same level the judges had requested for FY 1999, but was rejected by the government.

At present, they are short of 27 employees as they only have 42 in their workforce who are forced to take additional duties and assignments in the absence of other personnel.

“There is no extra money for anything of extravagant spending,” Manibusan told in an interview after the two-hour hearing, adding that the additional $300,000 they are seeking would only pay for the salary of the new employees.

Lawsuits growing: He also underscored the difficulties the courts have had to deal with in recent months as the number of criminal, civil and family cases has shot up dramatically during the worst economic crisis besetting the island.

So far, they have been besieged with 3,000 civil complaints arising from bankruptcy and failure by some companies and individuals to pay their debts, rent and utilities. Traffic cases are up to more than 2,000 this year alone.

“We are not efficient because we have over maximized and taxed our personnel,” Manibusan explained.

To help the judiciary with its current cash-flow problems, finance officials assured that they would set aside an additional $250,000 on top of the $4.95 million allotted under the FY 2000 budget package.

Ed Tenorio of the Office of Management and Budget disclosed that the Superior Court was able to save that money from the austerity program, representing lapse funds from their current fiscal budget.

Officials hoped to use the surplus to purchase new computers as it is one of the immediate needs of the courts. “We will try to sit down with the Superior Court and address their request for FY 2000 to see if we can accommodate them with the money,” said the OMB official.

Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Karl T. Reyes said they would appropriate these savings within the lower court itself so that new employees for such critical areas as court marshal and clerk of court can be finally accommodated.

He believed, however, that both the Supreme Court and the Superior Court could merge their operations since they are now in the same building, saying “they can utilize both personnel so that they can live with the resources they have.”