Eventually, the budget problems that are shuttering Maine’s courthouses for two weeks every year will have to be solved. For now, however, workers are making do with an imperfect solution.

For three years now, the state has closed all its courtrooms to allow judges, clerks and other workers to catch up on a backlog of tasks that can’t be completed during normal workdays. The courts blame staffing shortages and insufficient budgeting for falling behind.

It’s a serious problem. Trials and hearings are postponed while clerks work to update the lists of people who haven’t paid fines that are due and mark off those who have. The tasks are important and shouldn’t be put off. The lists determine who will have a warrant issued for their arrest and document who has paid their obligations. If the lists are wrong, the wrong people could be arrested.

The state has dealt with serious budget problems for the past two years without raising broad-based taxes. Cuts in service should be expected. But not all services are equal. Imagine if a backlog at the courthouse wrongly landed you in jail. Scary.

Each week that the courthouses are closed for normal business, workers may be able to catch up on paperwork and projects. In the long run, however, they fall further behind. Locking the front door won’t reduce the case logs or move trials off the docket. Criminals won’t start behaving, and lawsuits won’t adjudicate themselves. All that work is waiting when the doors open the next week, and the system starts out behind again.

With state money tight and residents demanding tax relief, it would be unreasonable to expect full funding for any state program in the immediate future. But nothing good can come out of a courts system that must close its doors for two weeks every year just to make sure the wrong people don’t wind up behind bars. Fixing this problem should be a priority.