by David Chapman
Staff Writer
When the Florida Legislature recently adopted Florida’s new and leaner budget for the 2008–09 fiscal year – $66.2 billion, down over $4 billion from last year – it didn’t spare many from the funding cuts.
Northeast Florida’s legal community was just one of the many slashed, and it’s applying bandages in the form of pay rate freezes, attrition and new policies to staunch the bleeding.
“The cuts definitely are affecting the court system,” said acting Court Administrator Joe Stelma, who was assigned the duties by Chief Judge Don Moran.
The 4th Judicial Circuit has 157 court employees, including judges and administrators, and the budget cuts will force changes. According to Stelma, it is still too early to say how or where the court will make the personnel cuts, but there isn’t much choice: every circuit in Florida is facing the same issue. A meeting between court administrators all over Florida last week in Tampa showed just how dire the situation has become, he said.
“It’s painful,” said Stelma. “It is going to put a lot more responsibility on the court administration and everyone in the court system itself.”
Stelma said with more work to go around, it will end up slowing the system and affecting the public.
“It’s not what we hope for at all, but it is what we have,” said Stelma. “We don’t have a choice and to use an old expression, ‘It is what it is.’”
The budget cuts will affect the public in ways other than simply slowing down the court processes. Both the Public Defender’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office are facing serious budget issues.
“There’s no way to get around the fact that it’s difficult to deal with budget cuts,” said Public Defender Bill White.
White said his budget is getting cut 9 percent (from $11 million last year to $10 million for the fiscal year beginning in July) and that’s on top of the 6 percent it was cut last year. Dealing with the cuts and their affects won’t be easy.
The Public Defender had 82 full-time and three part-time lawyers on staff in 2007. Through attrition, White said that number will be reduced to 78 full-time lawyers in 2008.
Another way White is offsetting losses is by hiring students at hourly rates and gathering volunteers from Florida Coastal School of Law, the University of North Florida and Florida Community College at Jacksonville. White said the program thus far has been a success and the Office will continue to implement it.
But finding additional staff to handle the influx of new cases will be a challenge. So will keeping the present staff content knowing there will not be a pay increase or bonuses for the 2008–09 year.
“It’s the second year of no pay raises for us,” said White. “But morale is high over here. We had the lowest turnover rate in years. We’re kind of the Peace Corps of the criminal justice world, so those who get into it know they are making sacrifices.”
Like the Office of the Public Defender, the State Attorney’s Office will also feel the squeeze in 2008–09.
“It’s going to have a tremendous impact on us,” said Chief Assistant State Attorney Jay Plotkin. “We have the potential to lose as many as 16 positions.”
Plotkin said he’s fortunate to be in the Jacksonville State Attorney’s Office, where its $24 million budget is run fiscally tight and can “better weather the storm,” than many other state agencies.
While he said the State Attorney’s Office won’t be laying off anyone, Plotkin said that like White’s office, positions will be lost through attrition.
“Our office needs to be regularly infused with new lawyers because of the different types of cases,” said Plotkin. “We try to have a few extra available. There isn’t that luxury in this budget year, and where we normally would bring in 14 new lawyers, this year we’ll be lucky to get half that.”
Plotkin said the SAO is pretty efficient with its caseload and diverts minor cases. But, there is an inability to pay the lawyers and staff what they deserve and he doesn’t know how much longer that can last.
“Unfortunately, I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Plotkin. “We’re down to the bone right now as it is.”