State-funded district judge positions must be directed to where they are needed most.

It’s unfortunate that when state funding is tight someone has to lose in order for someone else to gain.

It’s doubly unfortunate when that win-lose scenario further feeds the divide between rural and urban regions of Kansas. But as populations decline in rural parts of the state, it becomes more and more difficult to justify retaining all of the public services to which those counties are accustomed.

That’s the case in a recommendation of the Kansas Legislature’s interim Special Committee on the Judiciary that would reduce the number of magistrate judges in four districts in order to add judges in four others. The four districts that would lose judges are in north-central and western Kansas where population generally is declining. Districts that would get new judges are in Reno, Douglas, Dickinson/Morris and Harvey/McPherson county districts.

Those counties that would lose judges naturally are upset, but the numbers tell the story. Each of the districts that will lose a judge handles fewer than 600 cases a year. The 12th Judicial District, for instance, includes Cloud, Jewell, Lincoln, Mitchell, Republic and Washington counties. There is a single district judge for the district but each county has a magistrate judge for a total of seven judges in the district.

The 7th Judicial District, which includes only Douglas County, has five district judges and one magistrate judge. Those judges averaged more than 2,500 cases apiece in Fiscal Year 2002. That’s a total of more than 15,000 cases. So while seven judges in the 12th District are handling fewer than 600 cases, the six judges in the 7th District are handling more than 15,000. Do the math.

It’s also important to point out that the expenses of adding a magistrate judge in Douglas County are paid by the county, not the state, as is the case with most magistrates. So overloaded were the county’s district judges that county commissioners voted two years ago to budget $150,000 a year to pay the salary and staff of a magistrate. They hoped that would be only a temporary situation until the Legislature approved a sixth judge for the district, but tight budgets have stalled any discussion of the state taking over that responsibility.

A recent Associated Press story quoted law enforcement representatives in the judicial districts that would lose judges as saying they were concerned that judges wouldn’t be available when they needed them to approve search warrants or other documents. In at least some of those districts, however, the district judge and a magistrate are based in the same town, and the loss of one judge wouldn’t seem a great hardship.

State Rep. Mike O’Neal, a Hutchinson attorney and chairman of the interim judiciary committee, told the AP that the recommendation to move magistrate judges is “a political hot potato, but it’s hard to defend having a judge in every county when the caseload doesn’t support it.”

That judgment may seem harsh, but, unless significant increases in the state’s judicial budget are forthcoming, it’s a reality that state legislators must face.