Each year, the Idaho Supreme Court works with the Legislature and Governor’s Office to fund projects that support the Court’s mission to provide access to justice through the timely, fair, and impartial resolution of cases. The items here are among the Court’s priorities for fiscal year 2025 (July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025).  

Statewide Administrative Support

Over the last 10 years, Idaho’s Judicial Branch has been required to expand court programs and services, increase court personnel and judgeships, and introduce new technology to support county courts throughout this state. 

While the Judicial Branch has been successful in expanding services and obtaining funding to support these increasing needs, they have placed ever-increasing demands on the support staff at the Administrative Office of the Courts. 

To address these concerns, the Idaho Supreme Court requests five new full-time, permanent positions: two in its Finance Division, two in its Human Resources Division, and one in the office of the Administrative Director of Courts. 

An accounts payable clerk would support processing of all court distributions and funding allocations — about 10,500 expenditures each year from a budget of just over $100 million. All of this work is currently done by just one person, a situation that is unsustainable, presents financial control risks and means payments can not take place when this person takes time off. Meanwhile, processing these expenditures has recently become more complex. 

A financial specialist would process and support all travel for court staff throughout the state. This involves between 300 and 600 travel reimbursements each month for judges, judicial district staff and other court employees. This work is currently being done by an administrative assistant and, more recently, by temporary staffing services. 

A human resources manager and human resources specialist would focus on operations including recruitment, payroll, leave absence management and other compliance activities — allowing the HR director to engage in more strategic work on compliance, investigations, county-court relationships and Americans with Disabilities Act court access requests. 

A technical writer/document manager would be responsible for consistent, coordinated mapping of court rules, policies and statutes, and for creating standard procedures around court management documents. 

These positions will serve all Idahoans through centralized support for local court operations across the state. They will ensure we have proper staffing to support our operations and to mitigate any internal control risks. 

For FY2025, these positions involve a request for a General Fund appropriation of $783,669. This includes $96,500 in one-time costs used to provide computer equipment and software for the positions.