Local attorneys have sent a letter to Cowlitz County commissioners complaining that the Superior Court is so severely underfunded that the county’s citizens are being denied justice.

The Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Bar Association said it unanimously passed a resolution in late October concluding that people don’t have access to the courts because of constant trial delays and the court’s general inability to handle a backlog of civil and criminal cases. Defendants, the association said, have to repeatedly waive their constitutional right to speedy trials.

The resolution urged the commissioners to review the county’s non-essential programs and “re-allocate sufficient funds to allow our citizens access to the courts.”

“The restricted access to justice caused by the financial shortfall has a severely harmful impact throughout the community,” wrote Longview City Attorney Marilyn Nitteberg-Haan, the bar association’s president. “The well-being of the citizens of our county necessitates access to the courts free from these limits. To have these limits prohibits the rights of citizens to justice for all.”

Superior Court judges have been pressuring the commissioners to increase court funding for years. The conflict flared in May when all of the county’s departments were forced to cut their budgets by at least 10 percent. The Superior Court Clerk’s office lost four deputy clerks this year. Those and other cuts have prolonged divorce cases and stalled trials, the Superior Court judges said.

Judge Stephen Warning has said the court is so bogged down that it has ceased to function properly. And the Washington Administrative Office of the Courts said in a report in September that funding for Cowlitz County’s Superior Court does not meet the state’s Constitutional standard. The report recommended that the county hire another judge. It also pointed out that the county’s Superior Court has less support staff per judge than other counties examined by the AOC.

Commissioners have said tax cuts and a dismal economy have drained the county’s revenues, and there simply isn’t any more money to give the courts. The county faces a $2 million budget shortfall next year, Commissioner Kathleen Johnson said Thursday. The county’s law and justice programs, she said, never recovered from the loss of car tab revenues caused by Initiative 695, and the Legislature never made up the difference. Other counties, she said, are struggling with the same problem when it comes to funding the courts.

“We understand where they’re coming from,” Johnson said of the judges and attorneys. “We don’t have any more dollars right now.”

But Warning noted Thursday that the commissioners have not yet announced how much money they will give the court in next year’s budget. The judges have asked for just more than $1 million, about $70,000 more than they got in last year’s budget. Warning said he hoped the bar association’s letter would demonstrate that the lack of funding isn’t some abstract concept, but a problem that creates real hassles for real people.

“I’m sure they’re listening,” Warning said of the commissioners. “Hopefully they are persuaded.”

The bar association’s letter, which was sent Oct. 29 and released by the commissioner’s office Thursday, included examples of poor service and chronic delays.

Longview attorneys Barry Dahl and Kendra Sprague provided a statement saying the cuts have had a “dramatic effect” on divorce, custody and other “family law” clients. Figuring out when a case will be resolved is a “crap shoot,” they said, adding, that cases are often delayed “at the last moment, typically the day before the scheduled start of the case.”

“The longer it takes to finalize a case, the greater the legal expense for each client,” Dahl and Sprague said. “Continuances leave many families in an ongoing state of flux that is emotionally devastating, especially to children.”

Duane Crandall, another Longview attorney, said his jury trials are “routinely bumped because of court congestion,” meaning his clients have to wait at least six months to resolve their cases.

“The plaintiffs are usually injured people who had to pay their medical bills, get current on their mortgage and truck payments, etc.,” Crandall wrote.