Bills filed to improve clerk funding
Rep. Chuck Clemmons
The second step of Florida clerks of courts’ long-term plans to improve their finances has begun in the form of bills filed in the Florida House and Senate.
HB 397 by Rep. Chuck Clemmons, R-Jonesville, and SB 552 by Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, address several ways to enhance income for clerks, although the bills aren’t expected to address all their needs.
The bills would reallocate some filing fees and other revenues already collected, however they would not increase any filing fees or other costs paid by lawyers or parties.
“What that change is is incremental change, a realistic set of goals rather than trying to hit a home run and get everything at once,” said Flagler County Clerk of Court Tom Bexley, legislation chair for the Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers. “Over time, I think it’s more realistic to try to do a series of reasonable bills with a reasonable price tag.”
Overall, Bexley and Jason Harrell, legislative and governmental affairs director for FCCC, said the bill is expected to increase revenues for clerks by about $15 million annually, far less than the $40 to $50 million annual shortfalls they have been suffering for their court-related operations.
“It’s not going to completely fix it, it will take us time over the next couple years,” Harrell said.
The bill, aside from reallocating revenues from various sources, also addresses clerks’ role in helping Floridians with payment plans for court-ordered fines, fees, and costs, and with restoring driver licenses when those have been revoked for nonpayment of those levies.
“One of the things we’re trying to do as we’re working on our underlying funding challenge is we’re trying to. . . help with payment plans…so we can help [people] stay current on their payment plans. It helps reduce suspension of driver licenses,” Harrell said. “It helps us to offer something positive up as well as [work] on the underlying budget challenges.”
Provisions of the bills:
• Increase the amount clerks would keep on filings fees in mortgage foreclosure cases valued at more than $50,000. Clerks now get $195 on each of those filings. Under the bill, on cases valued from $50,000 up to $250,000, clerks would get $545 of the $900 fee. On cases valued at $250,000 and over, clerks would receive $660 of the $1,900 filing fee. The bill would not affect the fee split that goes to the state courts Revenue Trust Fund, although it would reduce the amount that goes to the state’s General Fund.
• Make a change in clerk-offered payment plans for those paying court costs, fees, and fines. Instead of a monthly plan being set at a minimum of 2% of annual income, the plan could not exceed 2% or $25, whichever is greater. The initial payment, now set at 10% of the total, could be either 10% or $100, whichever is less and not including any service charge.
• Amend F.S. §28.35(c)(1) so clerks could not only recommend changes in court-related fines, fees, services charges, and costs, but how those funds are distributed.
• Have the Clerks of Court Operations Corporation, which provides budget and allocation support for clerks’ offices, calculate the additional clerk staff necessary to support new judges recommended by the Supreme Court and approved by the Legislature.
• Allocate to the clerks’ fine and forfeiture funds the filings fees for cases valued at more than $2,500 for crossclaims, counterclaims, counterpetitions, third party complaints, notices of cross appeals, notices of joinder, and motions to intervene as appellant or cross appellant. Those filing fees, which are $295 on cases from $2,500 up to $15,000 and $395 for cases over $15,000, now go to the Department of Revenue.
• Allow clerks to petition the state for a $40 reimbursement for handling Baker Act and Marchman Act petitions, domestic violence injunctions, and similar matters for which they now do not get reimbursed. Harrell said the bills provide that the reimbursement would be subject to an annual appropriation from the Legislature for that purpose. He added there is currently authorization for a $40 reimbursement for domestic violence injunctions, but it has never been funded.
• Allow clerks to check property records and motor vehicle title records when someone seeks to file as an indigent in civil cases. Harrell said clerks already do this “ministerial function” in criminal cases and this seeks uniformity with that practice.
• Provide that, when someone challenges a civil traffic infraction before a judge, magistrate, or hearing officer and is found guilty, the minimum fine cannot be less than set out under F.S. §318.18. Harrell said the law already sets a limit on the maximum fine and this sets a floor. The actual minimum fine would depend on the infraction, as spelled out in the statute. “That looked to be a place where we could find an efficiency in the judicial process,” he said.
• Improve technology links between the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and clerks to allow clerks to reinstate drivers licenses for those who have paid fines, fees, and costs in criminal traffic cases. “Clerks already have the ability and authority to reinstate licenses for nonpayment of court fees in civil traffic cases,” Harrell said. “But we’re not able to do that in criminal traffic cases. We think it’s just a technology issue between our clerks’ association and the department to do that.” That will save those people an extra trip, which Bexley said can be a considerable hassle for people in a large county who have to find the time to make the trip and pay for parking. “The last thing we want to do is make this process any more burdensome and difficult than it is for many people,” he said. “It’s a tool of public service for us and I think people would greatly appreciate it.”
Bexley said HB 397 and SB 552 are based on the success clerks had last year with bills allowing them more budget flexibility with reserves and cash flow issues and in part of their step-by-step approach to fixing their budget problems.
“A $40 to $60 million ask in one year is unrealistic and probably a bit unreasonable,” he said. “The whole idea is to do this where it’s not a burden on anyone. Doing this over a series of years is a lot more palatable.”
Bexley and Harrell said the clerks’ long-term financial difficulties have come from an over-reliance on revenues from traffic fines to support other clerk court operations, including criminal court activities. For a variety of reasons, traffic revenues have been falling or unstable for a decade or more, and the COVID-19 pandemic put a particular severe hit on clerk revenues.
The bill gives the clerks “an additional stable revenue source” besides traffic court revenues, Harrell said. “It will help us reduce that reliance on civil traffic. It’s not going to completely fix it. That will take us time over the next couple years.”
Bexley said the FCCC was gratified that experienced lawmakers like Boyd and Clemons agreed to sponsor the bills.
“They have worked with us before and they know and embrace our issues,” he said. “It’s great to work with them.”
