Session: 2023-2024
ACLU-PA Position: Supports
HR 416 (PN 3044) is a House resolution that would direct the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to conduct a study and issue a report on the court system's financial stability, its dependence on collecting fines and fees to pay for its operational needs, forecast future suspected growth in this trend, and detail what would be needed should the legislature wish to stem this projection or eliminate it. Specifically, HR 416 would require the report to:
- Identify and examine the similarities and differences in the various ways the states choose to fund their court systems.
- Examine and analyze the historical roots of funding court systems through fines and fees throughout the United States.
- Analyze the effect of court dependence on fines and fees on different population groups as measured by socioeconomic status.
- Examine and analyze whether and how cost shifting across various levels of government incentivizes the trend toward reliance on fees and fines for revenue.
- Identify and quantify the various costs associated with the collateral consequences imposed on individuals, their families and communities who cannot afford to pay the fines or fees.
- Identify and quantify the various costs associated with the collection of fines and fees and related enforcement.
Over the past two decades, PA's court system has grown increasingly reliant on fines and fees—imposed by judges and collected from defendants—to pay for its operational costs. In the early 2000s, revenue generated from fines and fees represented approximately 1% of the court's budget. Today, this reliance has grown to approximately 20%.
The courts are a separate but equal branch of government with the constitutional mandate to administer justice. Their essential mission must not be compromised even by the smallest hint of impropriety or the perceived or real need to close a budget shortfall. Unfortunately, the state's unwillingness to adequately fund Pennsylvania's courts forces them to rely on fines and fees just to cover basic operations, which increasingly threatens to undermine the court's credibility and erode public trust in the Commonwealth's judiciary.
Check the resolution's status here.
