GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — Following years of court case backlogs in Brown County, a bi-partisan group of lawmakers is hoping to address that problem by submitting a budget motion in hopes of adding more resources to the Brown County court system.
"We do have a lot of cases in our backlog, and one of the ways we can address that is to be able to spread them out to more judges," said Honorable Judge Tammy Hock.
Judge Hock spoke before lawmakers about the need to address Brown County's backlog.
For perspective, pending felony cases are up more than 200% over the last decade in Brown County, and there is one judge for every 34,000 people in Brown County. That's compared to one judge for every 21,000 people in Milwaukee.
Even though this proposal was removed from Governor Tony Evers' original budget proposal, lawmakers from both sides—like Republican Rep. Ben Franklin and Democrat Rep. Ryan Spaude—say they're hopeful it will be approved by the Joint Finance Committee.
"I'm pretty confident that it'll move forward just because of the bi-partisan support. It was initially on the Governor's budget proposal. So, I'm very hopeful," Rep. Franklin said.
"And, because these things have both bind from the Governor as well as legislative republicans, of all the different things in the mix this budget season, I'm feeling pretty good about the odds of these items," Rep. Spaude added.
Lawmakers say they'd like to add two judges, three assistant district attorneys and two new court reporters to the Brown County court system to help address that backlog.
We'll continue speaking with lawmakers and watch what the Joint Finance Committee decides.
Please stay with NBC 26 as this story develops.
