Shortage of court staff adding stress, overtime to work at Douglas County Court

LINCOLN — Ron Murtaugh, the administrator of the Douglas County Court, remembers the days when a job opening used to draw 100 applicants.

Now, he said, he’s lucky to get 20.

“We have openings that are so hard to fill that some are now labeled, ‘Open Until Filled,’ ” Murtaugh said.

His supervisors are constantly training new staff, he said, because turnover has also increased.

Just like the state prison system, State Patrol and state transportation department, the Nebraska judicial branch has struggled to retain and replace employees, in positions ranging from court reporters to probation officers. They are jobs that pay from $28,000 a year to up to $58,000 a year.

The chief justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, Mike Heavican, in his annual “State of the Judiciary” on Tuesday, highlighted the judicial branch’s efforts to address its workforce shortages.

Bonuses, job fairs, videos

An official who heads up the court system’s hiring efforts said several new steps have been taken to recruit new workers, including offering hiring and referral bonuses, attending more job fairs at colleges and producing videos touting the benefits of working in public service.

Additionally,  salary increases were approved last year for about a third of the judicial branch’s employees, mostly trial court staff.

Gene Cotter, the deputy administrator for operations, said those efforts are paying off in many areas of the state, though workers shortages remain in some positions and in some areas of the state, he said, citing Douglas County.

As of Jan. 1, the court system reported 121 job vacancies in positions including probation officer, records clerk and drug technician (who conduct drug tests on probationers).

Vacancies drop

As of Feb. 15, the number of vacancies had dropped to 89 out of about 1,600 positions under the Nebraska Supreme Court, county courts and probation offices.

That 5% vacancy rate statewide is about where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, Cotter said. It’s quite an improvement from last summer, when the judicial branch had nearly 200 vacant jobs.

“It’s still a number,” he said of the 89 vacancies.  “It’s not a sky-is-falling number.”

Meanwhile, Murtaugh said about one in five jobs in the Douglas County Court system are unfilled, and the vacancy rate in the probate division, which deals with guardianships, wills, estates and adoptions, is 45%.

Murtaugh said his court personnel are doing the best they can and using more overtime. The pool of available labor is just smaller, he said, and while the judicial system has raised salaries, so have other agencies and private employers.

Compensation study

The Nebraska Legislature is being asked this year to grant salary increases for probation staff, based on a compensation study done by the judicial branch. Hiring bonuses, first offered in 2021, have been increased to $3,000.

Cotter said many people don’t realize the broad nature of jobs in the court and probation systems. So recruitment videos have focused on employee testimonials about their work, he said.

To help judicial districts that are short of probation officers, Cotter added that some officers have been shifted to one district to another to help out.