Judicial branch leaders told lawmakers on Monday that their priority for the legislative session — the establishment of 29 new judgeships across Colorado — has come down in cost amid broad concerns about the state’s budget deficit.

Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez and State Court Administrator Steven Vasconcellos previously informed the Joint Budget Committee that the cost of 29 judges and associated staff would exceed $20 million annually. However, during a joint hearing of the House and Senate judiciary committees, Vasconcellos revised the estimate to $15.6 million.

The revision, he said, was attributed to a calculation error and an adjustment in the funding of courthouse furnishings and audiovisual components.

Still, the overall budget request was met with skepticism by some lawmakers, given the roughly $672 million deficit this year.

“Can any of the projects be put on hold just for one more year?” asked Rep. Rebecca Keltie, R-Colorado Springs. “This is the year we just have to stretch it through.”

“This is not a ‘wants’ list. This is our needs,” responded Vasconcellos. “With respect, I think it’s more complicated than just straight cuts.”

On Jan. 8 and Jan. 13, the judiciary committees held their annual oversight hearings of the Judicial Department and related justice agencies. Márquez made her first appearance as chief justice after rotating into the position last year, and she said her goal is to formalize several efforts to improve judges’ training and coaching, and to encourage employee feedback about chief judges’ performance.

“Years ago, folks would get sworn in and would literally be thrown onto the bench, into a docket on day one, with virtually no orientation or training,” Márquez said. “What we’d like to do is make that onboarding process a little more robust and ideally modularize it in a way that we can make it available in an online and on-demand format, so any judge who rolls in at any time of the year can experience the same onboarding.”

The bill for additional judgeships has been introduced in the Senate and is awaiting a hearing. Márquez disclosed that Reps. Matt Soper, R-Delta, and Javier Mabrey and Jennifer Bacon, both Democrats from Denver, have already indicated support for the legislation in their chamber.

Márquez shared that the judiciary will bring on two additional security personnel to cover the entire state, each of whom is temporarily certified with Colorado’s peace officer licensing agency. She reiterated a concern raised during last week’s “State of the Judiciary” address of malicious actors disrupting virtual court proceedings.

“This is a true public safety need” requiring a digital platform tailored to court use specifically, she said. “We’ve even had a handful of events where beheadings were shown in the middle of courtroom proceedings. This cannot happen. We cannot move forward and provide a safe, neutral courtroom environment in a virtual setting if we cannot control the platform in ways that allow our presiding judges to be able to let the right people in and keep the wrong people out.”

Multiple lawmakers asked about the handling of domestic violence and child welfare cases in the trial courts. Márquez responded that she would discuss those concerns outside of the hearing.

Judicial discipline commission

Representatives of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline reported that they are in “a very good place right now” after recent legislative reforms, staff increases and a constitutional amendment voters enacted in November to reform the disciplinary process.

Executive director Anne Mangiardi addressed the year-end report her office issued last week ahead of the hearing, noting there was an increase in complaints that would likely be permanent due to a greater awareness of judicial discipline.

Mangiardi spoke about the commission’s decision not to publicly discipline any of the judges identified through reporting by The Denver Gazette as having failed to submit timely financial disclosures for one or more years.

“I think this has been so much in the news it’s unlikely to happen again anytime soon,” she said. “I think judges are gonna keep much better records of their own submissions.”

Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, grilled Mangiardi on why it took so long for D. Brett Woods, the former presiding judge of the Denver Juvenile Court, to be publicly disciplined in December 2024 following his suspension from the bench one year earlier for workplace intoxication.

“The delay there was incredibly unfortunate. However, the delay from when the commission learned of it to when Judge Woods was off the bench was very short,” Mangiardi replied.

Other lawmakers asked if the commission would consider publicizing aggregate data about where disciplinary authorities are seeing trends in delayed decision-making or other forms of concerning conduct. Gonzales also questioned whether judges should even be members of the judicial discipline commission in the first place.

“Absolutely, yes,” said Mangiardi, elaborating that judges know from their experience what types of conduct are unreasonable and can provide context to the non-judge commissioners.

Access to Justice Commission

Colorado’s Access to Justice Commission, which advocates for greater resources for civil litigants and affordable legal representation, warned against putting existing legal aid programs on the chopping block to balance the budget. Elisa Overall, the commission’s director, said distrust in governmental institutions is “at a crisis level,” which is exacerbated when people have negative experiences with the legal system.

She raised the hypothetical scenario of a parent taking leave from work to attend to a sick child. The employer, who denies access to leave, fires the parent for missing too many days. The parent then becomes unemployed, cannot pay for medical services or rent, and potentially becomes involved with the child welfare or criminal legal system as a result.

“It may be tempting to cut or reduce funding for legal aid,” Overall said. “Please remember that what you would be cutting is the intervention points that avoid taxing some of our most expensive state services. In a crisis budget year, legal aid is the last thing that should be cut because it saves us so much money downstream.”

Sen. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, asked Overall to react to the Judicial Department’s request for more judges.

“From a ‘how long am I waiting before my civil case goes before a judge’ standpoint, how does your office — and more importantly, how do the people you interact with and reach out to — how do you experience the issue of the sufficiency of the number of judicial positions?” he asked.

Overall said the commission does not pay as much attention to delay issues, but she empathized with the legislature’s struggle with funding the positions.

Department of Law

Attorney General Phil Weiser told the committees he is seeing “more and more” legal challenges occurring to laws enacted by the General Assembly, particularly in the areas of reproductive rights and gun safety.

Addressing the likely consequences of an incoming Trump administration, Weiser said he takes the same approach to whomever is in power federally: “If the rule of law is violated in a way that harms Colorado, my job is to defend Colorado,” he said.

Weiser fielded questions from several lawmakers touching on water protection, opioid addiction, the consent decree between the state and the city of Aurora, and his antitrust litigation. Weiser also said he is prepared to do what he can on consumer protection issues should a Trump administration pull back on federal efforts.

“We’re not looking at a marketplace that is fragmented. We’re looking at a marketplace that’s concentrated,” he said. “We are in the driver’s seat, willing and — as we proved — able to stand up to the biggest companies and the biggest law firms to protect Coloradans.”

Public defender

The Office of the Colorado State Public Defender has asked for a $20 million increase in its budget, bringing it to $198 million to represent indigent criminal defendants. Megan Ring, who heads the office, told lawmakers the priorities driving her budget request include the growing complexity of cases due to digital evidence, the need to conduct a workload study at the direction of state auditors and the fallout from the recently revealed misconduct of a DNA analyst.

“I’m in a position where we can’t” cut the budget, said Ring. “If we don’t meet our constitutional mandate of providing effective assistance of counsel, our clients get to — as they should — say, ‘My lawyer didn’t get the investigation done that I needed,'” triggering costly postconviction proceedings.

James Karbach, the director of legislative policy and external communication, addressed the costs associated with revelations that Yvonne “Missy” Woods, an analyst with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, deleted data, skipped steps or otherwise compromised results in her DNA testing in more than 1,000 cases.

Karbach said the cases of affected defendants will need to be addressed by lawyers in a timely fashion to prevent challenges from being time-barred. However, the office has not received a complete list of cases impacted by Woods’ misconduct.

“So, when CBI learned about what happened,” said Soper, “had CBI reached out to the public defender’s office to say, ‘Hey, there was a massive data breach that occurred — data manipulation, something that would affect potentially dozens, hundreds, thousands of your clients’ cases?’ Were you contacted at all by CBI?”

“No, they didn’t,” responded Karbach.

Alternate defense counsel

The Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel, whose contracted lawyers represent criminal defendants when the public defender’s office has a conflict, similarly warned lawmakers against cutting its budget. Director Lindy Frolich pointed out that approximately 88% of the office’s budget goes toward representing clients.

She echoed the message from the public defender’s office and the judiciary that cases have grown more complex and workload concerns are severe. Frolich similarly expressed concerns about the fallout from the Woods scandal.

“I think we’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg so far. And as the word spreads, we’re gonna see more cases,” she said.