This is what the voters mandated in the last election. They want cuts and they want them now. It looks like the justice system will just have to do more with less.

Yeah, until YOU are a victim...

The headline should read: The Most Bloated MN General Funding Recipient Category Is Crying For More [again]; Magnusson's Tin Cup Has Passed - Gildea Out Working The Streetcorners. _______________________________________________________________________ Seriously, the notion that number of cases has no bearing is ludicrous. We prosecute so much victimless crime today that there is absolutely no excuse for delays in real crime cases... drop the victimless matters and put the resources toward real crime. This whole problem would solve itself very quickly if we forced our justice system back towards trial by jury. No more negotiated pleas considered by the courts without sign-off of approval by the direct victims, immediately accomplishing two things: 1) no victim would ever again watch in dismay as the courts implemented a plea arrangement unsatisfactory to that victim. 2) all victimless matters would have to go to trial unless dropped by the state. Doing this would immediately put an end to victimless prosecutions, and we would have a justice system once again focused on real crime rather than being a tool in the hands of social engineers wishing to herd the citizenry this way and that. ______________________________________________________________________ Today trial by jury occurs in less than 5% of cases. Our justice system is supposed to rest on that foundation of trial by jury, rather than trial by jury being the rare exception in a system of bureaucratic negotiations imposed under duress. ______________________________________________________________________ Less than 100 years ago any evidence of a pre-arranged negotiated outcome was still solid basis for appeal of conviction. No law has been changed to support this systemic change, our constitution was never amended to allow this... it is unconstitutional, an end-around play designed to avoid the rigors required by our constitution to criminalize citizens. Implemented bureaucratically by those who make their living in the system and have no interest in seeing the reach of that system limited as our founders envisioned. There must be no more funding for the judiciary spending category until they clean their own house.

The track record of Public Safety / Judiciary spending in MN since 1992: _______________________________________________________________________ '92/'93 biennium: 399 Million _______________________________________________________________________ '94/'95 biennium: 716 Million _______________________________________________________________________ '96/'97 biennium: 888 Million _______________________________________________________________________ '98/'99 biennium: 995 Million _______________________________________________________________________ '00/'01 biennium: 1.169 Billion _______________________________________________________________________ '02/'03 biennium: 1.345 Billion _______________________________________________________________________ '04/'05 biennium: 1.446 Billion _______________________________________________________________________ '06/'07 biennium: 1.706 Billion _______________________________________________________________________ '08/'09 biennium: 1.875 Billion _______________________________________________________________________ No other gen fund expenditure category has seen anything remotely close to this proportional growth, nearly five-fold growth in the period. The insinuation that the justice system has seen cuts is a shameful one. If we cut the PS/J expenditures in half, it would still receive every dime and then some that it received in 1992, with full increase for both inflation and population growth accounted for. Any lawmaker who will not consider and implement very significant reductions in spending in this category that has done nothing but bloat across our lifetimes is a much greater public danger and nuisance than the large percentage of the citizenry being criminalized over victimless matters will ever be.

"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." -T. Jefferson

Part of the problem is that prosecutors are charging too many cases, overloading the system and creating the backlog. There is a screening process that must, ethically, be followed; and too many prosecutors allow the police to determine the charging of the cases, instead of reviewing them. It feels like a form of oppression, which significantly adds to the case load of everyone involved, Judges, PDs, private counsel, and prosecutors. And then there is the wasted time and effort created when, as Mr. Ostrem and I had words over just this last fall, the County Attorney ignores an existing Court Order on a matter and tried to impose additional conditions on the return of some property that had been seized pursuant to a warrant and had no evidentiary value. When called on it, he didn't like my "tone" of frustration at his attempt to recaption the matter as a forfeiture (which had never been initiated) and to ignore the Judge's Order in the matter that was brought. He demanded an apology from me, but didn't offer one for his behavior. Huh? Yes, there is a problem. At least part of that problem is that the gatekeepers aren't watching the gates. This would include, in my opinion, more prosecutorial discretion/screening in the charging of the cases, the granting of more probable cause challenges by the bench to the cases that are brought, and the following of the process by the state's attorneys. There's entirely too much politics and political correctness in the governmental sphere. When the government attorneys start following the law as it exists instead of trying to make up for what they perceive as "deficiencies" and "limitations" in the statutes passed by the legislature, the better off we will be. Many of those limitations were put into the statutes in order to curb abuses and to limit the power of the government to an acceptable level. The "process" is killing us. Too much stuff is in "process."

Did you know that MN presently supports nearly twice the active resident attorneys per capita as compared to any of our neighboring states? A return to a requirement for the full rigors of trial in order to gain convictions would also have the immediate effect of bringing our numbers in that regard back in line with our neighbors. I find it interesting to say the least, that none of these facts presented above ever garner headlines and coverage in this paper. Never... instead we are treated to the sort of garbage contained in the byline here: "...the prospect of any more state cuts is chilling..." A little fact checking and an honest, straight-forward presentation of the history of state spending for these authoritarian structures would provide the fresh air to dispel such myths for being the smokescreens that they are.

fear tactics from the court system

Econ 101: Live within your means. Why are we constatnly trying to figure out how to obtain goods and services that we cannot afford?

The budget/spending figures cited by Chris5144 are misleading. Nearly 2/3 of the Public Safety budget/spending is for the MN Department of Public Safety (highway patrol, driver and motor vehicle licensing, etc.) and the MN Department of Corrections (prisons and probation agents), both of which are part of the executive branch and not controlled by the courts.