Juvenile court to lose workers

A change in budgeting for the local court juvenile division could mean fewer employees for the center and the elimination of diversion-related programs in the Cape Girardeau area.

For fiscal year 2006, the Missouri Circuit Court Budget Committee for the first time counted juvenile-office employees paid with grants in configuring how many employees are needed at each judicial circuit.

The 32nd Judicial Circuit, which includes Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties, staffs six full-time deputy juvenile officers and 12 grant employees.

The grant employees were hired contractually with funding paid by Cape Girardeau County, some of which is reimbursed through various grants juvenile officer Randy Rhodes secured. The work costs about $200,000, most of which is secured through a grant with from the Missouri Division of Youth Services.

Because the 12 grant employees added up to 4 1/2 additional full-time employees, rounded up to five, the committee viewed the circuit as overstaffed.

No employee currently working for the juvenile division would be fired or relocated. The five positions will be reallocated to other circuits through attrition. When a local employee quits or retires, their vacated post will not be refilled.

"That means someone working really hard gets punished for providing services that the state's not really paying for," Circuit Judge Benjamin Lewis said of Rhodes. "We're really not costing them any money."

The grant employees are teachers and after-school tutors who work with the juveniles, Rhodes said. By working and learning at the juvenile detention center, the youngsters catch up on school work, stay out of trouble and avoid being sent to the Division of Youth Services.

Now that the new workload configuration includes grant employees, those employees and their programs may disappear in a year or two just to keep the number of juvenile officers needed in the counties, Rhodes said.

"We're not prepared to lose five of six deputy juvenile officers," he said, adding he would not write future grant proposals and would likely not renew grant contracts. Doing so would ensure grant employees would be eliminated, decreasing the number of employees acknowledged by the committee.

Rhodes said the committee's decision to include the grant employees in their formula contradicts what he was told seven years ago. In a letter of appeal sent to the budget committee Aug. 1, Rhodes included a memo from the Missouri Office of State Court Administrator that stated the office did not recognize grant staff.

But the chairman of the budget committee, 16th Circuit Judge John R. O'Malley, stressed that grant employees had to be included. "The fact is they are available. They're standing there working," he said.

It becomes unfair when a circuit is short two employees based on their workload but they also have the grant employees to cover the work, O'Malley said. By staffing the perceived shortfalls, a circuit could actually wind up with more staff than they need, the judge said.

But Rhodes argues that full-time juvenile officers are not interchangeable with the grant staff. "If I lose a deputy juvenile officer, I can't bring that teacher out to do that job," he said.

The "relatively new" workload formula is also weighted toward formal dispositions, such as adjudications and formal supervision. Of the approximately 1,000 cases the 32nd Circuit handles each year, 85 percent are dealt with informally, Rhodes said.

Instead of going before a judge for disposition, the officers work with the judge, juvenile and parents to arrange a resolution. Many times such a resolution includes community service.

Because the child in these instances never goes through the court for case disposal, the case is not included in the budget committee's workload formula, giving an appearance of far fewer cases than the circuit actually handles, according to Rhodes.

The committee's approach to budgeting would be comparable to the state funding school districts not by student attendance or child population but by how many students are punished.

"They're weighing it on the number of kids who go through the principal's office," Rhodes said. "That just doesn't make sense."

Circuits across the state operate under the same philosophy of dealing with cases before the court gets involved, O'Malley said. O'Malley trusts the way the formula handles workload would never inspire juvenile officers to put children through a formal court process to acquire more funding.

"That's where it would lie on integrity," he said.

While O'Malley admitted the current system has deficiencies and is subject to manipulation, he said it is the best system to date.

kmorrison@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127