ONE YEAR AFTER the governor and the Legislature volleyed over funding for a financially stretched court system – with judicial leaders warning that their ability to adequately staff the system was on the line – Gov. Maura Healey’s latest budget pitch pairs modest overall increases with funding boosts for operations and public defenders.
Healey’s $62.8 billion budget proposes an overall judiciary appropriation of about $1.48 billion, a slight increase from last year’s appropriation of just under $1.4 billion.
Judicial leaders last spring expressed pointed concern that operations and administrative costs in the Trial Courts could force the courts to trim hundreds of positions without a funding increase from the state. At the same time, a pay rate dispute involving attorneys who represent indigent clients tore through the courts.
Healey is pitching $999.87 million for the Trial Court — a 3 percent increase over the fiscal 2026 appropriation of $970.7 million. The largest overall court spending increases come in the $384.2 million Trial Court administrative staff line item, up $24.1 million from the last year’s appropriations, and a $52 million boost in funding for the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
The Legislature on Wednesday will kick off a series of budget hearings, which will stretch through early spring, on the governor’s spending proposal. Judiciary leaders, including Chief Justice of the Trial Court Heidi Brieger and Trial Court administrator Thomas Ambrosino, will testify at one of the upcoming hearings.
A spokesperson for the courts declined to comment on Healey’s budget proposal.
Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Kimberly Budd told lawmakers last year that Healey’s proposal fell “dangerously short of meeting the Judiciary’s needs.”
The courts are cognizant of the state belt-tightening, Budd said, as federal funding sources became increasingly imperiled by President Trump’s policy agenda.
“I am fully aware of the fiscal climate confronting this committee,” Budd said at a 2025 budget hearing. “Addressing the growing needs of the Commonwealth with limited resources is always difficult, but never more so than in this unsettled time, with the uncertainty around federal funding.”
Ambrosino told lawmakers in April 2025 that the Trial Court needed $985.5 million for fiscal 2026 — $33 million more than Healey’s initial recommendation. Ambrosino called that request a “maintenance budget” simply to preserve existing operations, because the governor’s proposed funding would not be enough to make up for the normal amount of staff attrition.
The Legislature ultimately put forward a $970 million Trial Court budget last year, splitting the difference between the governor’s proposal and the judiciary’s request. The courts still felt the pain, leading to a staffing shortage and hiring freeze as well as delayed infrastructure projects.
The warnings last spring came as the Trial Court struggled with a growing workload. Brieger reported 543,000 case filings from July 2024 through March 2025 – a jump of 30,000 cases compared to the prior year – along with a “tremendous increase in self-represented civil litigants” requiring extensive staff resources for procedural guidance.
One of the major budget concerns rattling the court system for the past year has been funding for the state’s public defender system.
The private lawyers who are contracted to handle the bulk of indigent defendant cases staged work stoppages last year over low hourly rates, ramping up the workload of staff lawyers with the Committee for Public Counsel Services and leading to such a shortage that judges began releasing people awaiting trial.
Under Healey’s prosed budget, CPCS would receive $380 million, up $52 million from the fiscal 2026 appropriation. This includes two significant increases — $20 million for the public defender agency specifically and an increase of $32 million for private counsel compensation.
The Legislature in July 2025 passed a $259 million supplemental budget that provided CPCS with $40 million to hire approximately 320 new public defenders by the end of fiscal 2027. The legislation also raised private bar counsel rates by $20 per hour over two years —a more than 30 percent increase for district court rates, but still lagging many peer states.
The agreement included measures to “minimize future disruptions” and required CPCS to prioritize hiring public defenders in areas with unrepresented individuals awaiting counsel, particularly counties with recent private bar work stoppages.