Kane judges, public safety butt heads over budget

When it comes to budget disagreements, Kane County's judicial and public safety employees tend to have the biggest budget with the most problems in the past couple years. On Friday, it became clear that perhaps the biggest budget battles yet seen will occur as multiple county departments await the arrival of new judges in December.

New judges mean new courtrooms. New courtrooms mean more assistant state's attorneys, more public defenders, more clerks and more sheriff's employees to work those courtrooms.

Kane County State's Attorney John Barsanti told the county board's Judicial and Public Safety Committee Friday that everyone should publicly acknowledge as soon as possible that all those new employees are going to cost money. No one should be under the illusion that another round of flat budgets or budget cuts are possible next year. The time to submit budget proposals for next year will come in just another month or two.

"Do I submit a new budget knowing I'm going to have more staff, or do I submit a budget that's flat?" Barsanti asked. "What do you want to see? Don't be surprised when everyone's coming in asking for a little more money."

Committee members said they believe Barsanti runs an efficient department. They will trust him to present a budget based on what he actually will need. The committee did not extend that comment to the other department heads who will be affected by the new judges, but left the door open to negotiate.

"Once you explain why we need more (money) we pretty much have to face it," said Committee Chairman Mike Kenyon. "The budget is just a planning tool. Our job is to try and spread the money out."

But spreading the money out comes with the additional burden of hitting a floating number right now. The county is trying to plan for the arrival of three new judges, but Chief Judge F. Keith Brown said for the first time Friday that the county might not get three. Instead, as few as one or as many as four may come to the county based on whatever Brown decides in coming weeks.

On Friday, he told Barsanti to start planning to staff at least one new courtroom that will most likely handle DUI and/or domestic violence cases.

"We're going to have to have a lot more dialogue in the next 60 days," Brown said. "There is no doubt that we need more resources to handle the caseload that we already have. DUI and domestic violence, the amount of people and resources that we're using for that, is insufficient. The population has grown faster than the resources."