•S. Thompson Tygart, Jr., a Jacksonville attorney and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate, is a candidate for Florida district director of the school’s General Alumni Association. Tygart is a full-time mediator and his opposition is coming from Miami attorney Kevin Levy, a partner at Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart. Tygart is a member of several UNC organizations as well as the American College of Civil Trial Mediators and the Bolles School board of trustees.
•Attorneys Matthew Breuer and Dabney Ware have been elected partners in the Jacksonville office of Foley & Lardner. Breuer is a member of the firm’s business law department and real estate practice. Ware is with the firm’s litigation department and the labor and employment practice.
• The City is seeking bids for a contractor to clean and repair the old Federal Courthouse. The building will be incorporated into the new $263 million County Courthouse complex.
• According to the Florida Bar News, the court system’s top legislative priority this year is to bring judicial branch employees’ salaries and benefits in line with executive and legislative staffers.
Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Belvin Perry, Jr., chair of the Trial Court Budget Commission, told the House Committee on Courts in January that the compensation disparities must be corrected in order for the court system to attract and retain quality staffers.
“This is limited to court employees and court employees alone — it does not deal with judges,” said Chief Judge Perry, who was briefing the committee on the court system’s funding needs as a late fill-in for State Courts Administrator Lisa Goodner.
Perry said a recent Office of the State Courts Administrator study found that 74 percent of court system employees made 12.4 percent less than paid comparable executive branch employees. The gap grows to 13 percent when compared to salaries paid to legislative branch staffers and other similarly situated employees of local governments. That, Perry said, has led to turnover and hiring problems.
“You don’t get your first choice; you don’t get your second choice; you get your third choice, fourth choice, and sometimes your fifth choice — and they don’t stay long,” said Perry, noting as an example that in the 11th Circuit, nine staff attorneys left for better paying positions with other government agencies in the past 18 months.
—courtesy of The Florida Bar News
