Sigfrido Steidel, director of the Office of Courts Administration (OAT) and administrative judge of the Judiciary, challenged before the House of Representatives the restructuring of the Judicial Branch proposed in Senate Bill 1096. He reiterated that eliminating the municipal judge category going forward would have significant consequences for the operation and budget of the justice system, and repeated the constitutional problems the Judiciary sees in the Senate bill.
Steidel said municipal judges are the public’s first point of contact with the judicial system, so their functions are critical and "irreplaceable." Removing this class would require adjustments in how workloads are distributed and in the resources available to keep services running, he warned. He told the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. José Pérez Cordero, at a public hearing that converting the 85 municipal judge positions into superior court judge positions involves not only salary adjustments but could also require assigning the institutional support structure that ordinarily accompanies each superior judge.
Steidel said the fiscal impact would be significant: a superior judge costs $571,573 a year when salary, employer contributions, support staff and infrastructure are counted, while he estimated the annual cost of a municipal judge at $250,651.