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There's good news and bad news. The good news is that cops and the agencies they work for aren't the only ones getting pink slips and seeing alarming budget cuts. The bad news is that budgets for schools, courts and other government functions are being slashed as well. According to a recent article in USA Today by William M. Welch, unprecedented layoffs and courtroom closings across the country have resulted in massive delays, dismissed cases and an increasingly difficult working environment as tensions flare and stress runs high.
At least 15 states have put court workers on furloughs, eight have cut pay, six have imposed layoffs, and six have closed courtrooms to save money as a result of state funding cuts even as the number of legal cases is rising, according to the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts. "The longer this continues, the more the public is going to feel it," Gregory Hurley, analyst for the National Center for State Courts told USA Today. "It's going to be significant. Worse than anybody here remembers."
The most dire stories come from California, where all courts are closed across the state one-day a month as a cost-saving measure. In Los Angeles, where 100,000 people a day go through the largest county court system in the world, 19 of 580 courtrooms have been closed and as many as 50 more are to be closed by September, Presiding Judge Charles "Tim" McCoy said.
Just recently Los Angeles started laying off 829 court employees, and by the end of the year expects what once was a 5,400-worker system to be reduced by about 20 percent. The state's budget crisis has cut $133 million from the Los Angeles court system's $800 million budget, McCoy said. The most obvious sign of the cuts are longer wait times for non-criminal cases.
Criminal cases are given priority because of speedy trial laws, but wait times are getting longer for those with civil, family, juvenile and traffic cases, McCoy and other court officials told reporters. And it's not just California. In New Hampshire, all courts will be shut down Friday for the first of three furlough days over the next several two months.
Court staff has been cut 10 percent over the past year, and the district and family courts which handle 84 percent of all cases have seen a reduction in court sessions of 12 percent. In Florida, officials instituted a full or partial hiring freeze for more than a year and laid off 280 employees from its 3,100-person workforce.
Pay for judges and other elected officials has been cut 2 percent and clerks of court have closed satellite offices, according to Lisa Goodner, spokeswoman for the court system. The cuts are so severe there already visual indicators illustrating the crisis.
Outside Los Angeles' main traffic courthouse, lines of people trying to pay or contest citations routinely stretch around the block. On a recent afternoon, more than 400 people were still in line when the courts closed for the evening.
"If we do not find adequate solutions to these difficult problems, not just the folks in California but elsewhere will find the courts simply cannot be responsive to their needs as in the past," McCoy told USA Today.
"And that's a real tragedy for all of us." Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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