Alabama chief justice orders cuts in trial weeks, may close 1 day per week

yahoo news ^ | Tuesday April 12, 2011, 3:46 pm | Phillip Rawls

[DeaconBenjamin]

Alabama's chief justice is ordering a reduction in the number of weeks for trials in courthouses statewide and is authorizing the presiding circuit judge at every courthouse to close court offices one day per week if necessary because of budget cuts.

Alabama's trial courts haven't been cut nearly as much as most state programs, but Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb said years of underfunding are catching up. She predicted defendants will sit in jail longer while waiting for trial, people with civil suits and divorce cases will wait much longer to have them heard by a judge, and the courts' ability to generate fines and fees to help fund state government will decline.

"The courts are not a nicety. They are a necessity," Cobb said at a news conference Tuesday in the Alabama House chamber.

Cobb said she is signing an order reducing the number of weeks for civil trials by half and the weeks for criminal trials by one-third. She said that's necessary because the trial courts won't have enough employees left after two rounds of layoffs to conduct full court schedules.

She said court employees will still report to work five days per week, but the presiding judge at each courthouse will have the discretion to close court offices one day per week to give the remaining workers time to handle the multiple duties they will have to assume due to layoffs.

She said the court system laid off 120 workers last year during budget cuts and is planning to cut another 150 of its 2,100 personnel on May 1. She's anticipating another 300 layoffs when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 unless the Legislature provides extra money. She said she hopes that will come, in part, through legislation to increase Alabama's cigarette tax by $1 per pack.

[blackdog]

So what’s wrong with working five days a week? I don’t get the argument?

[blackdog]

Like government shouldn't require public employees to do more? Fer cryin outloud........most court filings have been shifted from court clerks direct to the attorneys who were handed over the software requiring them to do the clerks work! That's how it worked in Wisconsin! The courthouses would not take debit cards or accept online payments for fines and fees because it would "take away jobs!"

When the lawyers had to start doing all the filings via software from their own computers, not one clerk position was cut at the courthouse.

Alabama may be different, but I doubt it.