The most ambitious efforts in decades to reform New York state's vast network of small-town courts -- where sessions can be held in a garage, and where more than 1,450 judges who are not lawyers conduct trials -- have stalled. Even a seemingly modest compromise, one that would allow a defendant to request that the judge be a lawyer, seems doomed, its sponsor says. Just a few years ago, critics of the courts said major changes seemed possible after nearly 100 years of failed efforts. The Legislature and a judicial commission held hearings, and state court officials instituted reforms. But efforts toward more extensive changes have recently slowed to a crawl in the state capital, Albany. The seemingly simple idea that the local justices should have law degrees went nowhere. Now, even a compromise legislative proposal, which would give people facing jail the option of having their cases transferred to a judge who is a lawyer, is failing. The proposal has been angrily opposed by the justices, who, in addition to conducting trials, also rule on search warrants and send people to jail. But it has also been opposed, though more quietly, by the state's top court administrators, who often walk a tightrope as they work to keep the courts running. A sponsor, Assemblyman Daniel J. O'Donnell, a Manhattan Democrat, said it was unlikely to pass this year. He said colleagues had told him that it threatened the stature of the justices, who are often tightly woven into local politics. 'They say, 'I'm getting a whole lot of pressure about a bill you have,'' O'Donnell said. Critics of the courts say the bill's failure would signal an end to the latest effort to change the courts. 'If this minimal legislative initiative can't succeed, the possibility of strong, efficient, constitutionally protective local courts will never happen in this state in my lifetime,' said Eve Burton, a lawyer who was a member of a state commission that studied the town and village courts in 2007. After a series of articles in The New York Times in 2006 showed extensive failings in the courts -- including town and village justices who mishandled money, made racist remarks, released friends without bail, denied some defendants lawyers and jailed some of them without trials -- state court officials appointed that commission, which concluded by proposing the measure that O'Donnell later introduced. After the articles in The Times, the state's chief judge at the time, Judith S. Kaye, also made the most sweeping changes to the town and village courts in generations. She required, for the first time, that a word-for-word account be kept of proceedings; she instituted improved supervision of the justices, and increased classroom training for non-lawyer justices -- who make up nearly three-quarters of the bench -- to two weeks from one, with added studies at home. The 1,250 town and village courts in the state, also known as justice courts, handle about 2 million cases annually, including traffic infractions, small civil cases and misdemeanor trials that can lead to jail sentences of up to a year. They also set bail in cases as serious as manslaughter and rape, though felonies are afterward transferred to other courts for trial. At the time of Kaye's plan for changes in 2006, critics said it was a Band-Aid approach that sidestepped the politically risky task of challenging the local justices. Lawyers and state officials said in recent interviews that the changes had brought some improvements. But Robert H. Tembeckjian, the administrator of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, said the commission had continued to discipline or remove justices who jailed people without giving them access to lawyers, ruled on cases involving their own relatives and friends, and violated other basic rules. 'For better or worse,' Tembeckjian said, 'the system is roughly the same as it was three years ago.' The town and village justices have reacted furiously to criticism, arguing that criticism of their courts was an attack on democracy. Their organization, the State Magistrates Association, has lobbied against O'Donnell's bill, arguing that it was a costly proposal by downstate critics. The association's president, Edward G. Van Der Water, a justice in Van Buren near Syracuse, wrote to his members in the fall that the bill was a 'clear and present danger.' Van Der Water, a former Syracuse deputy police chief who is not a lawyer, said in an interview that the measure 'promises to wreak a lot of havoc on the system' for no reason. 'I am not aware of a whole lot of mistakes by non-lawyer judges,' he said. State Sen. John A. DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, who is a defender of the justice court system, said the proposal was 'a backhand way' of trying to abolish the courts, a step he said had little support. By failing to consider major changes in the town and village courts, he said, 'the state has decided through the Legislature not to change the system.' But some upstate critics of the courts have said the changes put into effect by the state's Office of Court Administration in 2006 have not given people facing jail the quality of justice they deserve. 'The system remains, the problems remain,' said Gary Pudup, a former sheriff's deputy who is the chapter director of the New York Civil Liberties Union in Rochester. O'Donnell said that local justices seemed not to grasp concerns about legal fairness, and that he had been troubled to learn that the Office of Court Administration, headed by Judge Ann Pfau, was working against the proposal of its own commission. 'Anyone's basic concept of justice says, if you are depriving someone of their liberty, the person who is making that decision ought to be trained as a lawyer,' he added. The spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, David Bookstaver, said that the court system had 'made tremendous progress over the past several years in improving all aspects of the justice courts,' and that further improvements remained a high priority. But, he said, 'the bill simply is not practical.' He said transferring defendants to courts where judges are lawyers presented 'insurmountable geographic hurdles, and even if there weren't, the legislation would very likely overwhelm already overburdened judges.' In its report in 2008, the commission appointed by Kaye suggested that the town and village courts might not be constitutional because they do not provide defendants with a right to a judge who is a lawyer. It noted that 'many non-attorney justices face difficulties handling complex motions and misdemeanor jury trials.' But the commission concluded that there was 'no statewide political appetite' for wholesale change. It proposed the compromise that defendants facing possible jail time be permitted to 'opt out' of the justice courts. Burton, the commission member who said a defeat of the proposal would be a setback, was the lone dissenter on the 31-member commission. Burton, who is the general counsel of the Hearst Corp., argued in a written opinion that defendants who face time in jail need even greater protections. The sponsor of the bill in the state Senate, John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, the Democratic leader, said in an interview that he hoped to persuade Pfau and the state's current chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, to change their minds. He said some defendants had clearly been subjected to improper treatment in the town and village courts. But if the court officials continue to oppose the proposal that came out of their own commission, its future is not bright. 'I will not do it unless they sign on to it,' Sampson said, 'because it does need to be implemented.' 