While most people might expect a drop in foreclosure filings to indicate that things are improving in an area, dramatic drops in these court cases in Florida has actually placed the entire state judicial system in financial jeopardy and caused Supreme Court Justice Charles T. Canady to ask Florida governor Rick Scott for a loan of $72.3 million from other state funds in order to keep the state courts afloat[1]. Foreclosure filings across the country have been dropping since fall of 2010 when the robo-signer fiasco placed many foreclosures in doubt and cast shadows across the entire foreclosure process. That drop has resulted in a corresponding drop in the volume of fees that the state can collect from filing lenders. Those fees range from $400 to $1905, depending on how much money is at stake in the loan. Canady immediately established a hiring and budget freeze and is urging action from the governor “as quickly as possible” to avoid an $8 million shortfall that will force the courts to start cutting personnel and services and implementing unpaid furloughs.
The governor is expected to officially approve as much as $50.2 million to keep the courts operating[2]. Canady hopes to change the way that the courts are funded in the future to avoid similar crises, and state courts administrator Lisa Goodner observed that depending on such a “volatile source of revenue…[is something] we really want to work to fix.”
Do you think that this is really a “state of emergency” for Florida’s courts?
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[1] http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/state-courts-declare-financial-emergency-seek-help/1158797
[2] http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/fla-courts-clerks-may-get-emergency-90-million-1338090.html
March 22nd, 2011 at 8:06 AM
Actually, the Supreme Court judge may be handing Rick Scott a gift. Remember, this is the same Rick Scott who bought up hospitals in FL, close them down, fired all the hard working persons and then forced the few desperate ones who could get employed in the few hospitals he chose the keep open, to work in less than ideal conditions, so he could make his millions, while also engaging in practices that brought the wrath of regulators down on his hospitals. He may do just that with the FL courts.