A reduction of 250 to 260 assistant public defenders, plus 525 fewer assistant state attorneys. Around 2,000 fewer children represented by guardians ad litem.

Those were some of the dire projections made November 3 at the House Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee. The committee was conducting the annual budget exercise of asking state agencies how they would meet a demand of reducing their budgets by a certain amount. The target for this year’s exercise was 10 percent.

Chair Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Oviedo, noted that it’s unlikely the Legislature will seek 10 percent reductions, but likely that some cuts will be made. Initial projections have the state short by about $2.6 billion of its 2009-10 $66 billion budget.

“The purpose of this . . . is to identify recurring budget reductions that can be made in fiscal years 2010-11 in the event they are needed,” Adams said at the start of the meeting.

Court-related agencies left little doubt that after two years of rigorous cuts, further budget reductions would affect their ability to carry out their core functions. (The court system was excused from reporting how they would make the cuts until the committee’s December meeting.)

Here’s a quick look at what the committee heard:

• Guardian ad Litem Director Theresa Flury said a 10 percent reduction would cost her $2.9 million, of which $2.7 million would come from salaries. That would mean 67 people would have to be let go, and 2,000 fewer children would have representation.

• Eighth Circuit State Attorney Bill Cervone, president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said state attorneys have already cut their support staff, so the $34 million needed for a 10 percent reduction would eliminate 525 positions and virtually all of them would be assistant state attorneys. That would cause problems meeting speedy trial dictates and “there will almost inevitably be less attention paid to detail of what we are doing and that will lead to problems in the courtroom,” he said.

A potentially sobering statistic, Cervone said, is state attorneys are reporting stable caseloads while police are seeing more crimes. That may mean, he said, that police, who have their own budget problems, are catching fewer criminals. In response to a question, Cervone said his misdemeanor prosecutors are handling 300 to 400 cases, while felony prosecutors have caseloads of 125 to 150.

• Eighth Circuit Public Defender Rick Parker said a 10 percent cut would reduce defenders’ budgets by $19.9 million and 250 to 260 of their 2,800 positions. That might not leave them enough attorneys to handle all the cases they get.

“I don’t have the option of saying, ‘No thanks, I’d rather not do this today.’ When the case comes in, I assign a lawyer and we get to work,” Parker said.

• Jackson Flyte, criminal conflict and civil regional counsel for the Second District Court of Appeal jurisdiction, said a 10 percent reduction could cost the five CCCRCs about 46 of their 386 attorney positions. But the cuts probably won’t save the state any money, because the CCCRCs handle conflict cases from public defenders and represent parents in dependency cases — areas where those parties are guaranteed representation. If the CCCRCs don’t handle the cases, then the state will have to hire private counsel, and that’s likely to cost even more, he said.

• Bill Jennings, who heads the Middle District Capital Collateral Regional Counsel office, said the 10 percent reductions would cost him and Southern District CCR Counsel Neal Dupree nearly $700,000, and Dupree would have to cut four attorneys and Jennings three. Jennings said that would mean he could handle 15 fewer cases, but that would only mean private counsel would have to be hired to do the work.

The committee also heard presentations from the Department of Corrections, the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Parole Commission.

Adams thanked the presenters at the end of the meeting, noting the committee hasn’t been told yet how much money it will have to dole out to the operations under its purview. She added, “We will be working toward a budget goal once we have our numbers, but at least we have some idea of what the impact will be.”