SACRAMENTO Governor Jerry Brown has declared 2013 the year of fiscal sobriety in California. In the eyes of state court leaders, though, it’s looking more like 12 months of a painful financial hangover.
The 2013-14 budget Brown delivered Thursday was free of the nine-figure cuts and fund borrowing that have tormented the judiciary over the past four years. But to the chagrin of lawyers and judges, it offered no new money either. And it suggested that the austere conditions that now characterize many courthouses around the state are here to stay, at least for the short-term.
