Courts see lean budget: first DCA gets new home, less conflict work for private lawyers.

There are no salary adjustments for underpaid court employees or low-paid prosecutors and public defenders, no loan repayment help for public defenders, assistant attorneys general, and prosecutors, and no new judges.

Also, there will be much less work for private attorneys handling dependency and conflict criminal defense cases as a new state agency is being created to take on most of that work.

But there is more money for the Civil Legal Assistance Act, a new courthouse for the First District Court of Appeal, some funds for new prosecutors and public defenders, and funding for many of the court system's capital needs.

Those are among the results as the legislature reached agreement on the state's 2007-08 budget during the last week of the legislative session.

State Courts Administrator Lisa Goodner said overall the court system's budget for next year will be $492 million, up from $458 million last year. Part of that increase is misleading, she said, in that $8 million is for capital improvements to small county courthouses. Those funds are approved separately by the legislature, and although included in the courts' budget, the court system has no direct control over them, she said.

Of the approximately $30 million budget increase, $24 million is in nonrecurring funding, which is primarily used for capital and other nonrecurring expenses.

Of those, the largest is $7.9 million for a new First DCA courthouse. The remainder of the construction funds will be provided by the Department of Management Services through a bond program, she said.

First DCA Chief Judge Edwin B. Browning, Jr., said the new court is badly needed.

"We're obsolete," Browning said. "We were designed for eight or 10 judges and we have 15. When it was designed, each judge had one law clerk and now they have two."

The new courthouse will be designed to allow each judge three clerks, Browning said, as it has been found cheaper to add law clerks to assist judges rather than add more judges.

The court will be located at the SouthWood office complex in Tallahassee and the land will be free as the owner, a subsidiary of the St. Joe Company, has offered the land to the state gratis, Browning said. The current First DCA courthouse will be taken over by Florida State University's law school and also will house some of the Supreme Court's administrative staff. It will likely take at least two and a half years to construct the new First DCA courthouse.

Funding also was provided to...