Gov. Rick Scott approved a $19.5 million loan to Florida’s state courts to fill a budget shortfall that otherwise would have forced furloughs and court closures statewide through the end of May. The Florida Supreme Court announced the agreement on April 6 and said a supplemental appropriation would cover the remaining shortfall for June.

The courts depended on filing fees, and in recent years most of those fees had come from foreclosures, which had slowed. The drop in foreclosure filing fees left the court system facing a $72 million budget shortfall at the start of the year. Scott had earlier approved $14 million from a trust fund to stave off layoffs and furloughs through April.

In March, the court system froze hiring and prepared for possible layoffs, and Chief Justice Charles Canady of the Florida Supreme Court asked Scott and legislative budget leaders for help. Canady warned that without the money, criminal cases would get priority and civil cases would be disrupted, which he said would be “very bad for our economy and bad for the citizens of Florida.”

Before the loan, court administrators in Miami-Dade and Broward counties had warned employees and judges of possible furloughs and layoffs. In Miami-Dade, 18 full-time employees who handled foreclosure cases, among them case managers and a magistrate, faced termination. In Broward, administrators considered closing courts on certain days and requiring employees to take up to 30 unpaid work days over two months.

Some questioned whether the loan would be enough. State officials had calculated that the courts needed $58 million for full funding but could get by on $28 million until the end of June. Joel Brown, chief judge of the 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County, traced the problem to the foreclosure slowdown: “the filing fees have substantially been reduced.”

Peter Hardin reported this story for Gavel Grab on April 7, 2011, when the site was a project of Justice at Stake. His original post is preserved by the Internet Archive. This account of the same events was written from the public record.

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