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Conservatively, Florida needs 88 new judges to be able to keep up with increasing population and caseloads, according to an annual analysis conducted by the Florida Supreme Court. But the Legislature was too busy playing politics during the last session. For the second straight year, no new judgeships were funded.
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd held the issue of providing for a fully functional court system hostage to a piece of pork he and other Republican leaders in the House wanted. Byrd stewarded through the House a bill that would have funded 51 new judges, but the measure also included the establishment of a new 6th District Court of Appeal, an unnecessary new appellate court the Florida Supreme Court had not requested.
The new District court would have incorporated 10 Southwest Florida counties that are currently part of the 2nd District. The talk in Tallahassee was that this was a favor to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bruce Kyle. While the new court's headquarters was initially to be in Lakeland, it was presumed that it eventually would land closer to Kyle's home in Fort Myers. He could then conveniently take an appointment to one of the six new appellate judgeships that would be created. The court would also give the governor the opportunity to appoint a number of loyal Republican lawyers to an influential new bench.
Rightly, the Senate refused to go along.
The game resulted in the Legislature's shortchanging the court system for another year. Under the Florida Supreme Court's request, Pinellas County would have received two new county court judges, with Hillsborough receiving four and Pasco one. The two circuit courts servicing these regions would have added seven more judges.
Our local courts have been creative and efficient in figuring out ways to streamline operations with the use of case managers and other professionals. They have also employed hearing officers and mediators as a way to divert some of the workload from the trial court bench. But ultimately, there is no getting around the need for a baseline number of trial judges due to the number and complexity of cases coming into the system.
The Florida Supreme Court estimates of the court system's needs are grounded in a validated and widely accepted method, known as the Weighted Caseload System. It is a method that had been urged upon the court by the Legislature in 1998 and has been in use since 2000.
While it is true that the Legislature this year finally was forced by a constitutional amendment to shoulder its financial responsibility to fund the trial courts around the state, lawmakers also should have made provision for the trial court judges deemed necessary by the high court. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer, who headed up the negotiations with the Legislature on behalf of the trial courts, says getting the courts up to proper staffing levels should be a priority for next year's budget.
And please, next time, without the pork.