Court official: Planned cuts may bring closures, risks

If the mayor's proposed budget cuts for the court system and District Attorney's Office are approved, courtrooms in the city are "certain" to be closed on some weekdays starting this summer, jails would fill up, court calendars would get backed up and public safety could be at risk, authorities said yesterday.

"Courts will be closed - unless the tooth fairy comes and give us money," said Common Pleas President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe.

Dembe confirmed yesterday that court officials have been talking about closing all city courts - the Criminal Justice Center, Family Court, courtrooms in City Hall, Community Court, Traffic Court - on certain days starting July 1 if City Council approves the proposed $99 million budget for the First Judicial District in fiscal year 2010.

That figure represents a 13 percent cut from the 2009 approved City Council budget of $114.5 million.

Some ideas being floated include closing courtrooms every other Monday, or one week a month, she said.

There is also the possibility, Dembe said, of having to eliminate specialty courts, such as Community Court, the DUI and drug-treatment courts, and Foreclosure Prevention Court, which has helped people stay in their homes.

However, Everett Gillison, the city's deputy mayor for public safety, said yesterday that "this is not a doomsday budget."

"Does this mean courts may have to go to a couple of days in the summer where they would have to close? The answer might be yes," he said. "Am I worried it's going to cause wholesale havoc? No.

"We are going to try to minimize the destruction to the courts."

Court Administrator David C. Lawrence would not speak specifically yesterday about possible layoffs or court closures, saying only, "We're examining all of our options." He stressed that nothing is yet final.

In a March 3 memo to employees, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News, Lawrence warned staffers about the possibility of involuntary layoffs. Lawrence said that "a system of courtwide furloughs will . . . be instituted to minimize the number of layoffs."

Dembe said that the number of layoffs is not set in stone.

"We don't know what combination of remedies we are going to use," she said. "But they will be noticeably drastic. . . . We are hoping that the city would understand that public safety and child welfare leave us with relatively little wiggle room, but I don't see us getting through this - with the numbers we're given - without substantial harm."

Al Toczydlowski, chief of the district attorney's gun-violence task force, who had worked on the D.A.'s budget as deputy for administration, also decried the budget proposal for the D.A.'s office, which allots $24.9 million in fiscal year 2010, compared to $31.9 million for 2009.

With a such a large cut, "you'd have to realize you will have problems everywhere," he said. "It's so huge, it's not manageable.

"Cases are going to get postponed," he said. "Prison costs are going to skyrocket."

Toczydlowski said that the cut would affect every aspect of the D.A.'s office, including investigations, charging and appeals.

Dembe said that she is "frightened" about the impact the proposed cuts will have on the city. She said that she loves the libraries and enjoys police and fire protection, but "if you have a number of sacred cows, based on those people being able to rally their troops very . . . effectively, I don't think you get a good, overall result."

She said that some of the court costs over the summer come from police on vacation who come to court to testify and get paid overtime. That amounts to about $375,000 a week, she said.

Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby said yesterday that he didn't think officers get paid any differently during the summer from the rest of the year. But he said that budget questions should be directed to the Police Department. Its public-affairs unit did not immediately respond to an inquiry late yesterday afternoon.

Administrative Judge D. Webster Keogh of the Common Pleas trial division said yesterday that even cuts to non-core services would be detrimental.

Community Court, at 1401 Arch St., handles cases involving public urination and drunkenness. If it is shut, Keogh said, those cases would be heard at the Criminal Justice Center, across from City Hall, which would "add another 1,000 people to the lobby, bring a lot more witnesses" to that building, and result in more overtime pay. *