Court assessment fees becoming a funding issue

Nevada's court system has grown too reliant on assessment fees over the years and Supreme Court Chief Justice Nancy Becker argued Tuesday its a bad way to fund court operations.

Court assessments are added to all misdemeanors at the city and county level as an administrative fee. Over the years, the revenue from those assessments has grown to nearly $16 million a year. The state gets 49 percent of that revenue to help pay for a variety of court intervention programs. The courts get 51 percent directly to help pay operating costs. The assessments can be as high as $115 for a single violation and, when a defendant faces multiple counts of misdemeanor violations, can go as high as $1,000 on top of any other fines levied for the violations.

Becker told members of the Nevada Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees the funding has become a problem because revenue from those fees has flattened out in the past couple of years. Becker said the problem seems to be a shift in focus by law enforcement since 9/11 more toward security issues and less toward traffic.

"Quite simply, there just aren't enough people writing tickets and misdemeanor citations," she said.

She said the Supreme Court had contacted some local jurisdictions and, "they indicated to us they had shifted a number of people."

Becker said the administrative assessments have proven to be an "unstable funding source" and that she doesn't feel comfortable projecting any increase over the next two years.

"We just don't see the increase," she told lawmakers.

She said lawmakers need to take a hard look at how the courts are funded "because of the large amount of general fund obligations that are being funded by the administrative assessments."

"One of the issues is how should the courts be funded as opposed to how they are funded," she said.

The committee took no action on the court budgets.

n Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.