The Judiciary of Guam is increasing and implementing new fines and fees for the superior court this week. So, what's the reasoning behind the increases?

From $10 to $20, and $5 to $10 - Superior Court clearance and traffic fees will be doubled in the next two days. Trying to recover costs for particular services-that is the main reason for the hike in existing fees. According to spokesperson Shawn Gumataotao, it's been five years since an adjustment has been made to the fees.

"In that time there's been obviously an increase in the delivery of that services to people, also the fair chances act was also impacting this entire process and if you just go backwards to the beginning of the fiscal year when the judiciary's budget wasn't a big significant increase as we were expecting," Gumataotao said.

Gumataotao says their budget has maintained status quo from the past three fiscal years. And since the beginning of this current fiscal year, their staff has reviewed comparables across the country and keeping pace with the cost of doing business on Guam.

In addition, the courts are introducing new costs. Currently there are no fees for Counseling and education programs, use of the judicial education center, and services in the Marshal and Probation Divisions.

"There's a couple of new ones, our judicial education center, which just opened just a couple of years ago, we have been providing those services to the general public for free. But we have the power, the water, the computer labs that need to be maintained," he said. "Also our Marshals Division, which had provided certain types of training to outside organizations in the executive branch, no when we start doing stuff like taizer certification and other training for law enforcement it used to be free but the cost to deliver that type of certification the court was absorbing all that costs."

All fee changes will be effective August 1st. For the complete listing of fees, you can visit http://www.guamcourts.org.