Budget woes postpone class of court officers

A class of up to 50 state court officers that was to begin Thursday was postponed less than 36 hours before it was to start because of possible budget problems, according to state officials, drawing concerns about court security from court officer union leaders in Nassau and Suffolk.

David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state's Office of Court Administration, said the class was postponed because of concerns about budget funding. "[But] we will be evaluating it and should have a new schedule date within the coming weeks and months," he said.

He said that looking at their 2011 budget anew recently, it seemed increasingly uncertain, "where we felt it would be irresponsible to let this class continue, so we decided to postpone it until our budget picture is clearer." He added 190 new court officers graduated in 2010.

But Patrick Cribben, president of the Court Officers Benevolent Association of Nassau County, said that with the number of officers being significantly reduced through last year's state incentive to retire, the impact of not having the new class creates "a possible security risk" throughout the court system.

"We lost 15 officers through retirement and about another 10 through promotions to court clerk's jobs," he said. "We got none of those recent graduates but did get five transfers from New York City." He added that he had never been told how many of the postponed class would have come to Nassau, "maybe three to five, but we could use all we could get."

Cribben's counterpart in Suffolk, Brian Mischo, said he also had court security concerns, but said, "We have been told that the courts will open and have sufficient security, so I'll go with that for now."

Each union has about 850 full-time employees, but Mischo said Suffolk got five officers from the last graduating class and 15 transfers from around the state "because we were down so much."

Some of those scheduled for the postponed court officers class - who would only speak anonymously for fear it could hurt any future chance at the job - said they were upset because they had quit their previous jobs to start the class, now to be rescheduled in the coming "weeks or months."