Charting a new course for funding our courts.

• Author: Hawkins, Scott G.
• Position: President's Page

Lawmakers will convene next month for a constitutionally mandated session to redraw Florida's legislative districts, an exercise that will undoubtedly present important challenges.

Another challenge is just as crucial: Legislators must redo the boundaries of Florida's budget to ensure court funding is stable and secure.

The current situation has become unworkable.

As Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady said, "We need to have something where we don't have to go hat in hand to the governor asking him for a loan."

Last-resort pleas from the judicial branch to the executive and legislative branches for loans have happened twice this year.

In 2009, the legislature made significant changes to the budgetary structure of the State Courts System and the Circuit and County Clerks of Court, creating the State Courts Revenue Trust Fund for the courts, which supports nearly 83 percent of the entire court system.

The flaw in this scheme is that this trust fund is heavily reliant on an extremely volatile source: foreclosure filing fees revenue. Driven by paperwork snafus and bank moratoriums on foreclosures, a substantial decrease in the number of foreclosure filings sent the court budget into a downward spiral. In short, revenue from court filing fees was insufficient to cover the monthly bills. And you can't ask people to work if you can't pay them.

The emergency of not bringing in enough revenue to meet expenses threatened to close the courts with crippling furloughs for judicial +branch employees.

Hit with a $72.3 million cash flow crisis caused by the dramatic drop in foreclosure filings, the State Courts Revenue Trust Fund balance was headed to zero by the end of March 2011.

Thankfully, on April 6, crisis was averted when the governor and legislature approved a $19.5 million loan that had to be paid back by June 30, using funds provided in a supplemental appropriation.

Obviously, it was a temporary reprieve.

Decreased filing revenues continued, and a second loan of $45.6 million was approved in October and will sustain the courts only through March 2012.

Without these loans, the consequences of resulting court shutdowns and case delays would have been far-reaching. Without the courts, adoptions would not be approved, employment agreements would not be enforced, trade secrets not protected, and medical recoveries, criminal sentencing, and divorces would not occur.

It's important to remember that Florida's judicial branch receives only...