CS/CS/SB 2108--clerk of court funding.

This legislation revises the method for setting the budgets of the clerks of court. Under the bill, the court-related revenue collected by each clerk is remitted to the state to the Clerks of Court Trust Fund within the Justice Administrative Commission. The Clerks of Court Operations Corporation would be administratively housed in the Justice Administrative Commission and funding for the corporation and the clerks will be appropriated to this entity in the General Appropriations Act. The clerks' budgets would no longer be based on the projected revenue increase for each clerk and set by the Clerks of Court Operations Corporation. Instead, the Corporation would prepare a Legislative Budget Request for submission to the Legislature. Each clerk would prepare a budget request for the last quarter of the county fiscal year and the first three quarters of the next county fiscal year, and submit the proposed budget to the Corporation which is required to review each proposal, adjust the request as necessary, and make recommendations to the Legislature and Supreme Court by December 1 of each year. The clerks' budget requests would include a projection of the amount of court-related fees, service charges and other court-related clerk fees, which will be collected during the proposed budget period. If the Corporation determines that the proposed budget is greater than the projected revenues, then the clerk must increase all fees, services charges, and other court-related clerk fees to the maximum amount specified by law or the amount necessary to resolve the deficit, whichever is less. The budget proposal must include the number of personnel for each clerk and the proposed budget for each of the four core missions: case processing, financial processing, jury management, and information and reporting. Under each of these core services, the clerks will propose specific services (developed by the Corporation in consultation with the Supreme Court, CFO, and House and Senate appropriations committees) along with a proposed unit cost. The Legislature will accept, reject, or modify the proposed unit costs and appropriate the clerks' statewide total budget each year. If the unit costs are not specified in the GAA, then the unit costs proposed by the Corporation shall govern. The bill makes other changes such as: allowing the Supreme Court and the Attorney General to use vendors other than West Publishing Corporation for case law information; requiring clerks to use collection agents for uncollected amounts due after 90 days; requiring the clerks to maintain office hours with the consent of the chief judge; requiring the clerks to submit expenditure data to comply with the Transparency in Government Spending requirements of SB 1796; providing that the Technology Review Workgroup develop a plan and options for implementing the integrated computer system and limiting the clerk of the court information technology purchases during the period of the study; allowing clerks to retain 10 percent of all fine revenues collected for their operations; and transferring the Clerks of Court Trust Fund from the Department of Revenue to the Justice Administrative Commission. These provisions were approved by the Governor