Attention turns to Art. V funding: young lawyers get up to speed.

Revision 7 must be approached as an opportunity to improve the state's trial court system and not just an exercise in maintaining the status quo, according to Rep. Dudley Goodlette, who will play a central role in the House approach to Article V funding.

"I think that was the mandate of the citizens," said Goodlette, a former member of the Bar Board of Governors who will serve as House policy chair for the next two years. "We will not have created good public policy if we have not improved the current system."

Goodlette, R-Naples, told those gathered January 10 for the Young Lawyers Division's Governmental Symposium in Ponte Vedra that legislators expect this year to address structural, operational, and technological issues involved with the impending state takeover of more funding for the trial courts, but the hardest task--finding the money to pay for it--likely won't happen until the 2004 session.

In 1998, voters approved a constitutional amendment mandating that the state assume from the counties more funding of the county and circuit courts, no later than July 1, 2004. Under the amendment, the state will be responsible for funding most aspects of the state courts system, offices of state attorneys and public defenders, and other court-appointed counsel. Offices of the clerks of court (when performing court-related functions) will be largely funded through user fees. The counties will continue to pay for facilities, security, existing criminal justice information systems, communications, and, as specified by the legislature, local requirements.

But while Goodlette expressed optimism about using Revision 7 as a catalyst for improving the court system, others on the panel worried about the funding transition, especially in light of tight budgets at both the state and county level.

Bar President-elect Miles McGrane said the legislature has a huge task before it and that all debate should start with the position of maintenance of effort.

"And that is we know what the courts have now and we should maintain those efforts, whether it be at the state level or the county level," McGrane said, adding that the mantra should be "first do no harm to our state court system."

Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Belvin Perry, a member of the Supreme Court's Trial Court Budget Commission, said without adequate funding the court system as we know it will be drastically different.

Perry said in anticipation of the transition, the TCBC has come up with a list of...