Clerks struggle with $22-million shortfall: 'the whole system that we as lawyers have come to expect is going to come to a grinding slow motion'.

"We are well aware that, these drastic measures will cause disruption to our court, operations, including substantial delays in docketing times and issuance of defaults and summonses." --Palm Beach County Clerk Sharon Bock, in a memo to Chief Judge Jeffrey Colbath.

"We have no options but. to change the way we do business and deliver services.... We would anticipate that, there will be delays in the delivery of services, reductions in the hours we are open, and, to some extent., the quality of work we do" --Leon County Clerk Bob Inzer, in a memo to Chief Judge Jonathan Sjostrom and other court managers.

From one end of Florida to the other, customer service at 67 county clerks' offices will suffer because of a budget deficit of $22.4 million for the current fiscal year ending September 30.

Clerk employees are being laid off. Hiring is frozen. Those staffers lucky enough to keep their jobs will work harder with no raises. Phones will ring longer. People at the counter will wait longer for help. Lawyers will notice that the time between filing a lawsuit and seeing it appear on the online docket will go from days to weeks. Required redaction of confidential information in court files will take a lot longer. Online remote viewing of court records will be delayed. Some branch courthouses will close a day every other week.

"You hate to say the sky is falling, but in this case a big piece of the sky has fallen," said Fred Baggett, a Greenberg Traurig partner who serves as legislative counsel for the Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers.

"We are trying to mitigate the damage and trying to create a sustainable funding system, because the model there now, even with extraordinary measures ... is not sustainable and will require restructuring of the funding."

Fluctuations in collections of fees and fines, at the same time crime rates are up, created a perfect storm for the clerks' budget crisis. As Baggett and Leon County Clerk Bob Inzer explained:

The expected second wave of foreclosure filings never arrived. Toll-road violators once were issued citations that went to the clerks' offices, but now third-party collection agencies do that job. More citizens claim they are indigent to avoid paying filing fees in family law cases. Fewer traffic citations, the cash cow for clerks, were written by law enforcement officers.

"There was, shall we say, a larger level of grace given to people," Baggett said, of traffic citations down 9 percent statewide.

Traffic...