by David Ball
Staff Writer
Outside of punitive damage awards for their clients, attorneys aren’t known for having to ask for money very often. But that’s exactly what Florida Bar President Frank Angones told his board of governors at its meeting Friday in Amelia Island.
“Don’t be embarrassed about asking for money,” said Angones. “We’re faced with this terrible thing that all Floridians are faced with.”
The “terrible thing” is the potential for further decreased state revenue, and subsequently decreased funding of the state court system, if voters pass the
constitutional amendment for property tax reform in January. The court’s budget was cut more than 2 percent, or about $8.9 million, during the last legislative special session earlier this year.
Jesse Diner, chair of the Bar’s legislative committee, led the discussion by telling the board another 3 to 4 percent cut to the state’s budget, which could happen following passage of the amendment, could result in the loss of 300 employees in the state’s already taxed trial court system.
He then asked board members to go straight to the state officials controlling the purse strings and tell them how the cuts could impact a fair, balanced and functioning judiciary.
“We want you to go see your assigned (state) legislator with your unique story,” Diner told the group of 50 attorneys representing every part of the state. “The legislature isn’t really going to be focused on the legal profession that hard. If the vote fails in January, I don’t know where that leaves us.”
However, Florida Bar lobbyist Steve Metz said initial polling is unfavorable for the amendment to gain the 60 percent vote required to pass.
“I just don’t think that once the labor unions, like the teachers unions and firefighters, put their weight behind the anti-amendment stance that it will get by,” said Metz.
Even without the cuts, Florida’s state judicial system is having to do more with less, according to a Florida Bar report on 2008 legislative issues titled “Standing Up for Florida’s Judiciary.”
The report states that the state court’s 2007-08 budget of $491 million was 0.7 percent of the state’s total $71.5 billion budget — before cuts made during the third legislative special session.
The report also states that “of the ten most populous states, Florida yields the greatest number of appellate filings in proportion to its population and operates with fewer resources than its counterparts, yet ranks near the top in clearance rates of cases and opinions issued per justice.”
Judges’ salaries are specifically addressed, as well as their lack of cost-of-living increases during the past four years. Current judges salaries are $161,300 for Supreme Court justices, $153,140 in the District Courts of Appeal, $145,080 in circuit courts and $137,020 in county courts.
If justices had received the same raises other state employees have received since 2000, the report states, they would currently have a salary of $171,528. That salary would be $178,233 if judicial compensation had kept pace with inflation.
A report chart shows that in 1999, Florida’s salaries for judges were among the highest in the country. But in January of 2007, Florida had fallen in the list, passed by states like California, Delaware and the District of Columbia.
The Florida Bar report quotes U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as identifying inadequate judicial compensation as a “direct threat to judicial independence” and “a constitutional crisis that threatens to undermine the strength and independence of the federal judiciary.”
Angones said the effects could be the same across Florida’s judiciary.
“The court system is a co-equal branch of government,” said Angones. “When everything else fails, it falls to the courts to pick it up.”
The Florida court system budget makes up less than 1 percent of the State’s overall budget, and more than 80 percent is directly tied to circuit trial courts. Florida Bar officials fear that even a small decrease in state funding as a result of the property tax reform bill up for vote in January, could result in hundreds of court employees losing their jobs.
Graphic courtesy of the Florida Bar