Cost-cutting may close courts

[soup]

Cost-cutting may close courts

Workers may be sent home without pay. A judge calls it a "catastrophe."

By Jamal Thalji and Colleen Jenkins, Times Staff Writers
Published February 21, 2008

Judges across Florida say the state's budget crunch will shutter courthouses for weeks this spring as thousands of court employees are sent home without pay.

At risk, they say, is a halt to all civil litigation for those weeks, such as foreclosures and divorces. All that would be heard is priority family law cases and critical criminal proceedings.

>>snip<<

The state Supreme Court estimates that to absorb a 4 percent cut or $16.9-million, circuit courts would need to send workers home for 22 days; county courts for 58 days.

In Pinellas and Pasco it would affect 244 employees; in Hillsborough that number would be 240. The number for Hernando County court employees wasn't available Wednesday.

"I'm pleading for the life of a branch of government," Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis of the Florida Supreme Court told senators Tuesday as the state's 20 chief judges flooded the Capitol for a day of lobbying. "In essence, you are destroying a branch of government."

http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/21/State/Cost_cutting_may_clos.shtml

[L0oniX]

1. Well ...they could let all the pot smokers out of prison to cut costs.

But no ...the ignorant asscarrots have to punish the bad pot smokers because they are such a menace to society. What a load of crap!

[Freddie Stubbs]

2. It appears that they have dipped into reserves and shifted the cuts elsewhere