“Every day it depends on what our staffing is,” said Maura Hennigan, the clerk-magistrate for criminal business in the Superior Court that covers Boston. “We don’t know how long we’re going to go on like this.”
And the staffing shortage, triggered by a state-imposed hiring freeze, is but one of several financial problems piling onto the court system, ratcheting up tensions in a part of government that has often felt overlooked by Beacon Hill.
A work stoppage by court-appointed defense attorneys for indigent defendants over higher pay has rippled through the system, resulting in the dismissal of hundreds of cases. The prosecutors on the other side of those cases are also lobbying for higher wages — or leaving outright. And all of this is unfolding in courthouses that are long-overdue for a rebuild, but a $3 billion improvement plan from 2017 has long since been mostly abandoned.
Court observers say the judicial system has been so neglected by the state government for so long that conditions have reached a visible breaking point.
“The courts don’t have many advocates and it’s difficult for them to get the funding they need,” said retired District Court judge Tom Merrigan, a former member of the Governor’s Council that approves judges. “In order to keep public faith and confidence, which is essential for maintaining the judicial branch to serve the public, it needs to be funded in a way that allows it to function well.”
The hiring freeze has been the latest setback. In a July 29 email to court department heads, Trial Court Administrator Thomas Ambrosino laid out the stark reality of “our current budget crisis,” after a gubernatorial veto cut $9.3 million from what the Legislature had sought to allocate.
In the email, Ambrosino cautioned that even if the Legislature restores the funding, the courts may need to keep some cost-cutting measures into next year.
At the time of the budget cuts, Governor Maura Healey wrote in a veto message that she reduced the court by “the amount projected to be necessary.”
In a statement Friday, a Healey spokesperson said the current budget “sustains substantial recent annual investments in the Trial Courts,” including a 13.5 percent increase over the past two years. State data shows budget increases in recent years were absorbed in large part by fixed increases in salaries and operating expenses.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Ronald Mariano said Beacon Hill leadership is reviewing the governor’s vetoes and is considering supplemental funding that could include more money for district attorneys. The spokesperson said leadership is watching the September revenue numbers and economic projections as part of that review.
But already, the freeze is taking its toll. Michael A. Sullivan, Middlesex Superior Court clerk of courts and the president of the Superior Court Clerk-Magistrate Association, said he expects to be down three assistant clerks and half a dozen support staff by the end of the calendar year. The office is budgeted for 55 employees, including 23 assistant clerks, meaning he’s down more than 10 percent.
Sullivan said the lack of internal promotion opportunities is likely hastening departures, especially among experienced staff with an eye on being promoted to clerks.
“It’s a double whammy. You lose some new people, you don’t get replacements, and you lose people with institutional memory,” Sullivan said.
Separately, the work stoppage by court-appointed attorneys known as bar advocates, who handle most of the indigent-defense cases in the state, has drawn on since late May. Many of the lawyers in Suffolk and Middlesex counties stopped taking new cases as they sought an increase in their pay rate, which, at a base of $65 an hour, lagged behind their equivalents in neighboring states. The Legislature has since increased the hourly rate by $20 over two years, but that has still not been enough to draw most lawyers back to work.
The stoppage has roiled the court system, leaving thousands of people accused of crimes without access to a lawyer in violation of their constitutional rights. That’s led judges to dismiss more than 1,000 cases.
Attorney Sean Delaney, one of the leaders of the stoppage, said Beacon Hill has neglected the court system for years.
“It’s like you own a home and you don’t put money into upkeep for 20, 30, 40 years, and all of a sudden — oh, hell, nothing’s working, but we don’t have any money,” he said. “They just let this system crumble.”
The bar advocates typically represent about 80 percent of indigent defendants, with staff public defenders who work for the Committee for Public Counsel Services covering the rest. As part of the bill that included the pay hike, the state sought to double the ranks of public defenders.
But still, funding remains an issue: The existing staff is trying to unionize, seeking better pay. They’re aiming to have a statewide referendum on the issue next year. Currently, new CPCS attorneys make $79,500, or roughly $40 an hour.
Starting pay for new prosecutors is less, at $72,000.
Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr., the president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said he’s planning meetings with legislative leaders to ask for higher salaries.
“If I can’t give them more, we’ll lose them,” he said. This is especially necessary, Early said, given increasing work duties to turn over more material to the defense, as required by the courts.
In 2023, assistant district attorneys in Suffolk County sought to unionize in a push for higher pay. It was opposed by their boss, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden, and the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board sided with him, ruling that state law prevents the ADAs from collective bargaining.
Perhaps most neglected, court observers say, are the courthouses themselves. The average age of the courthouses is more than 76 years — placing the average opening date in 1949, when Harry S. Truman was the president.
Suffolk Superior Court opened in 1938, and shows it. A draft master plan published in 2017 called for replacing the courthouse, at an estimate of $329 million.
That hasn’t happened, and instead, there has been some renovations of the existing building, including replacing elevators.
A new Suffolk Superior Court was expected to be one of two “high-urgency courthouses” built first in a three-phase, 20-year plan.
The other was a new regional justice center to replace the aging Quincy District Court. Under the plan, Norfolk County would have relocated its Superior Court from Dedham to Quincy.
That plan has been delayed and scaled down. Plans are underway to replace the Quincy court in 2030, according to the state, but the relocation of Norfolk Superior Court is off the table.
Court observers noted the old courthouse in Dedham — which held the notorious Sacco and Vanzetti robbery and murder trial in 1921 — was on full display over the past two years during the high-profile Karen Read murder trial, which was internationally broadcast.
“We all saw in the Karen Read case they were squished into this little courtroom,” said Merrigan, the retired judge. “It was in full view that these facilities are not well equipped to be the open forum they need to be, from a justice and democracy point of view.”
Sean Cotter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @cotterreporter.
