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The Florida Legislature has had six years to take responsibility for stabilizing the state court system. Time has run out, and the bill is due.
Beginning this July, the state will be on the hook for fully funding the state court system, and the Legislature doesn't seem willing to meet its obligations. Lawmakers are facing a tight budget year, and they may be eyeing the court system as a place to cut corners. Any court program or service the Legislature doesn't deem essential could face deep reductions or elimination. But legislators must surely know that most of the administrative positions under consideration as expendable, such as mediators and intake personnel, are in fact integral to the operation of the state's courts.
Legislators resent the fact that voters, through a 1998 constitutional amendment, shifted the burden of funding the courts from counties to the state - where it belongs. Voters gave lawmakers six years to incrementally transfer the salaries and expenses of the courts to the state budget. But rather than do so, the Legislature dragged its feet. Now, in what is shaping up to be a painful budget year, Tallahassee has run out of time. The courts are the state's responsibility, and that has Florida's judges worried. Senate President Jim King has said he expects Legislature to "screw the counties."
In Hillsborough County, the deepest cuts may hit the family law courts. These specialized courts handle divorce, custody and adoption matters, among others, and depend heavily on support personnel to keep cases moving through the system. Those staff positions that may be on the chopping block include the division's three "general masters," lawyers who hear hundreds of cases a year and make recommendations to a judge; the mediation services staff that prepares 6,000 cases annually for mediation; and eight intake workers who, in 2002, assisted 22,000 litigants without lawyers to help them negotiate the system. The cuts will be no less painful in Pinellas and Pasco.
These staff members significantly augment the work of the county's eight family law judges. The judges are warning that the cuts could cause two-year waits for divorces.
When the voters told Tallahassee to start paying for the court system, they didn't mean a hobbled, stripped-down version. The Hillsborough County family courts are just one example of the kinds of devastation that could be inflicted on the state judicial system this year. Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead is warning that a raft of special court services could be eliminated, from drug courts to the night sessions of traffic courts.
This is unacceptable. Florida's special courts, streamlined processes and innovative programs are national models. They shouldn't be in jeopardy just because lawmakers want to pay for justice, as they do for so much else in this state, on the cheap.