While the budget does not contain any funding to support the order of the Supreme Court requiring statewide funding of the Judiciary beginning in 1998, it does contain $1.357 million to support the master appointed by the Supreme Court to make recommendations to the Court on the manner in which the county court funding order should be implemented. Originally the Governor had requested $859,000 to be appropriated in the 1996-97 supplemental. The amount appropriated in the 1997-98 General Fund budget encompasses that original request.

      The budget adopts an Information Technology Initiative called the Integrated Criminal Justice System. Funds will be provided to the Executive Offices [$11 million] the Judiciary [$342,000]. At the same time, the Office of Legal Systems which is responsible for the information technology of the appellate courts has been reduced by $58,000 [23%] in the 1997-98 budget. Expenditures from the Judicial Computer Augmentation Account continue to be limited to $10 million, although the budget does contain an additional $95,000 supplemental for the current fiscal year from the General Fund.

     In its budget request, the Judiciary requested funding for the following purposes, all of which were ignored by the Governor and Conference Committee .

     The Conference Committee Report did add $392,000 to the Governor's proposed budget for the Court Administrator.