ALBANY – After five straight years of no-growth budgets, the Judiciary has secured a 2.5 percent increase for the fiscal year that begins April 1, plus a $5 million appropriation to create 20 new family court judgeships in 2015.
The third branch, which has endured cutbacks, absorbed new expenses, adopted highly unpopular cost cutting measures such as shutting courts down early and limped through the economic crisis in do-more-with-less mode, got everything it asked for in the state budget agreement penciled in over the weekend by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders.
