SACRAMENTO - Twenty-two trial courts may not see any of the 50 new judgeships that state lawmakers promised them last year until at least June 2009.

Two legislative committees agreed this week to freeze funding for the new positions - which the governor originally was authorized to start filling four months from now - as part of a plan to close a $3.7 billion deficit in the current fiscal-year budget. The committees also voted to postpone funding for another 10 judgeships, unfilled since their creation in 2006, until July.

"A lot of people aren't happy" with the proposed cuts, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said Thursday. "We respect every group that's going to be disappointed with the budget solutions we're going to be proposing."

The delays in funding for new judgeships came as a surprise to judiciary officials, who had persuaded the governor to keep the money in his original budget-cutting proposal.

"I get what the Legislature is trying to do, but it's a setback," said Curtis Child, chief of the Judicial Council's lobbying corps. "This certainly delays our ability to keep moving ahead. Most of these judges are slated for those courts where there's been some pretty incredible growth."

The cuts must still be approved by the full Assembly and Senate. Those votes could come as early as today.

The proposal does not affect the governor's ability to fill vacancies created by retirements or resignations.

While legislators said they didn't want to freeze money for the judges, they were loath to approve all the mid-year cuts the governor had proposed to make in health care and financial aid to the poor. They may still have to do some of that anyway.

"This is just the icing on the cake," Núñez said of the proposed mid-year cuts. "What's coming in the budget year are devastating cuts."

Núñez was referring to the 2008-09 budget, a proposed spending plan that's already running a projected $14.5 billion in the red. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has recommended across-the-board spending cuts in almost every government agency, including the judiciary, which could lose a quarter of a billion dollars in funding. A third round of 50 judges, the final installment of 150 new bench positions sought by judicial leaders, could also be in jeopardy.

Schwarzenegger has already appointed 40 of the 50 new judges authorized by the Legislature in 2006, with the lion's share going to fast-growing Inland Empire and Central Valley counties. Of the 10 unfilled slots, Stanislaus County will receive three and one each will go to Butte, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Orange, Sonoma and Ventura counties.

Of the 50 new positions now delayed until at least June 2009, Riverside, Sacramento and San Bernardino combined are slated to receive a whopping 20.

The delay is devastating, said James Mize, presiding judge of Sacramento County Superior Court, because "we are already so far behind the curve as to what our needs are."

A crush of cases, Mize said, has already forced judges on occasion to recess cases, some with seated juries, to hear other cases that would otherwise be dismissed due to delay. Without a group of six to eight retired judges sitting on assignment, "we would be dead," he said.

The proposed delay "is certainly going to cause us a tremendous hardship because we were counting on them to take up some of the tremendous caseload that is being handled by our existing judges," Mize said.

The delays have the potential to push funding for the final group of 50 judgeships beyond 2010, which could give Schwarzenegger's successor the power to appoint a significant number of new judges.