The clerks have eliminated 1,250 positions statewide
By Gary Blankenship
Senior Editor

With some of their fees reassigned to the courts, and additional budget cuts mandated above that, Florida’s clerks of courts no longer have enough money to carry out all of their court- related duties.

The funding reductions have caused clerks to cut their payrolls by 1,250 positions, and many of their remaining employees are having unpaid furloughs.

That was part of the grim message that the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers brought to two Senate committees last month.

“All clerks have a hiring freeze, 62 [of the 67] clerks have a salary freeze, 3,475 employees have furloughs, and 31 counties have closed branch operations,” Sarasota County Clerk of Court Karen Rushing told the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 7. “The staff reductions are real and clerks have no choice but to reduce positions in order to meet payroll. . . .

“We cannot continue to provide the statutory mandates that we are obligated to do with the current funding situation that we have.”

Overall, she said clerks’ budgets were reduced over $90 million last year to around $451 million.

The clerks’ association made the same presentation later that day before the Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee.

Leon County Clerk of Court Bob Inzer said the bills, SB 1718 and SB 2108, addressing the clerks’ operations passed by the Legislature earlier this year had unintended consequences.

They changed the clerks from a revenue-based model to a needs-based model, effective July 1, he said. But clerks, like counties, operate on an October 1-September 30 fiscal year, unlike the state’s July 1-June 30 fiscal year. That difference forced clerks to make a mid-year shift in their budgets and budgeting process and has caused continued problems in dealing with their budgets.

The new budget process also mandated that clerks would get a twelfth of their court-related operating budget each month from the state. But on July 1, there wasn’t sufficient money in the state coffers to make those disbursements, so money had to be borrowed.

And there hasn’t been sufficient money since, Inzer said, and sometimes disbursements are made weekly instead of monthly because of the shortfalls.

The bills also mandated that the clerks begin “unit costing” as a way to evaluate efficiency. Some clerks share personnel systems with their counties, while others have collective bargaining agreements or higher cost of living factors. Because their basic expenses vary, it is impossible to develop a meaningful comparison, he argued.

Likewise, Inzer said the directive that disbursements be based on the previous quarter’s activity doesn’t work because many counties have seasonal variations in their workloads.

Rushing said the bills passed last year were based on faulty economics. The Legislature, she said, was told the clerks had experienced a 33 percent budget increase in previous years, where the courts had only had 13 percent.

But the clerks didn’t spend all the extra revenue they received, largely from the huge spike in foreclosure filings, and their actual expenditures rose only 21 percent, Rushing said. She added that the court spending over that time actually rose 22 percent, not 13 percent.

Also a sharp decline in revenues from traffic tickets was unanticipated. While foreclosures have increased, traffic tickets have dropped off as much as 40 percent in some counties. Rushing said recent hikes in traffic fines have apparently made police more reluctant to write expensive tickets and instead they give motorists warnings.

The drop in those revenues particularly hits clerks hard because the costs of handling traffic infractions are only a fraction of what they receive from their part of the fines, and the surplus goes to help fund other clerk operations, she said.

The clerks got a friendly reception from lawmakers, but no promises were made.

“I felt the Senate didn’t really know what we were voting on at the end [of the last session] and we weren’t allowed to make a good, educated decision on this,” said Judiciary Committee member Sen. Carey Baker, R-Eustis.

Committee Chair Sen. Joe Negron, R-Port St. Lucie, commiserated on the clerks’ budget cuts, but noted that other public agencies, businesses, and individuals have all had to cut back because of the recession.

“The clerks of court as a government entity have to be sensitive to the economic realities we are in and sometimes people who want to continue working, including me, have to realize they have to work more than they were working,” he said. “The citizens expect us to do what they’re doing at home — make sensible reductions and live within their means.”

At the Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, Chair Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, expressed a similar sentiment.

“We are going to have to look at what the concerns are with what we did last year and the concerns of the clerks with the fallout of what we did last year,” he said. “This is going to be a very troublesome session because we are going to have to make some more cuts and we are down to the bare bones now.”