State Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk told reporters last week that the first call he received to plead for a share of the newly forecast $1 billion state budget surplus came from Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea. Gildea deserves props for assertive advocacy for her branch of government, in which the chief justice serves as a de facto CEO. So does Bakk, for describing her plea to make a good point: Those who will seek increased state funding from the 2015 Legislature aren't all — or even mostly — greedy special interests at the public trough. Basic government operations also need increases in funding to keep pace with inflation and to function appropriately in service of the public interest. And government operations don't get more basic than the courts.

Gildea will ask the 2015 Legislature for a 7.5 percent boost in state funding over two years — about $45 million, on top of the judicial branch's currently forecast $600 million biennial budget in 2016-17. That's more than an inflationary increase. But it's warranted, for three reasons:

• Cuts to the courts during the Great Recession went too deep, and have not all been undone. A five-year salary freeze has ended, and staffing numbers are back to pre-Great Recession levels. Case backlogs and trial delays are shorter as a result. But staffers are still paid less than other state government employees. Minnesota judges' salaries rank 31st in the nation. And juror reimbursement is still a paltry $10 a day, down from $30 before retrenchment began in 2003.

Gildea proposes to bring juror per diems up to $20 and to increase their mileage reimbursement to employees' levels. She also wants to raise the salaries of both judges and their staffs. Without increases, the pools of both potential jurors and court personnel will shrink, depriving the accused of trial by a jury of their peers in the first instance and depriving the courts of talent in the second.

• A long-awaited transition to paperless operation is about to begin. The convenience of filing and reviewing case documents electronically, without making a trip to the courthouse, is finally about to come to the Minnesota court system. It's overdue, and the 10 percent reduction in staffing that occurred between 2009 and 2012 is among the reasons for the delay. Court personnel were stretched too thin in those years to spend time designing new ways to do business.

Eleven of the state's 87 counties already have made the paperless transition. Plans call for the rest of them to have the option of paperless operation in 2015 and to make a complete transition in 2016. Some of the cost associated with the change will be borne by the counties. But the judicial branch budget will need to be big enough to keep the workforce at full complement and perhaps to add a few positions as the courts ease their way into the e-world, Gildea said.

• Specialty courts are proving their worth, and should be expanded. More than half of Minnesota counties now are served by specialty courts or, as Gildea aptly calls them, "problem-solving" courts. She seeks their expansion. Their specialties include drug abuse, driving while intoxicated, domestic abuse and neglect, and offenses committed by military veterans and by those with mental illnesses. These courts provide intense interaction with offenders and bring other services to bear in sentences that often include treatment for chemical dependency and/or mental illness.

Legislators should see money spent to expand those courts to more places as an investment in human capital and in lower costs for taxpayers in the future. A June 2012 study of the effectiveness of drug courts found that they lead to more transformed lives. The study found a recidivism rate of 26 percent among offenders whose cases were handled by drug courts, compared with 41 percent among similar offenders tried in conventional courts.

Legislators should also see the proposal for more funding for specialty courts as illustrative of a commendable quality in this state's judiciary, instilled and reinforced by Gildea and a long line of her predecessors. Minnesota's judges aren't content to simply process the cases that come before them. They are thinking about how better to advance the larger purposes of the judicial system in a society that seeks to maximize the contributions of all of its citizens. Minnesota is blessed with courts that do more than administer justice. They aim to build a better society, one redeemed offender at a time. It's a mission that the other two branches of government should applaud — and fund.