Shortsighted cuts to court clerks

If you are buying or selling property, starting a business, getting married or divorced, filing a will, fighting a felony, leaving the military, involved in a lawsuit or simply need a fishing or hunting license, the latest budget cuts affect you.

Circuit court clerks' offices, which handle fees and paperwork associated with those transactions, are laying off staff around the state to meet a 15.6 percent cut. They're instituting furloughs, talking about closing court for half days and even leaving some courtrooms without clerks to record the proceedings.

The most recent effort to cut spending takes an ax to a 120-office state agency that last year brought in $63 million more than it spent.

There's no easy place to pare the budget, everyone acknowledges. Public safety must be a top priority, even as prosecutors are losing 5 percent and sheriffs, 4.7 percent. Still, it seems particularly shortsighted to take such a huge chunk from a money-making department whose 800-odd responsibilities are all mandated by state code.

Clerks' offices in smaller cities and counties don't bring in enough from fees to cover their costs, but larger offices - including Virginia Beach - send excess money back to their cities and the state.

This past year, Virginia Beach's circuit court clerk handed the city nearly $1.5 million; it gave the state $745,000. In 2007-08, the Beach office gave the city $2 million and the state $1 million.

In total, Virginia's 120 circuit court clerks' offices gave back enough money to operate the state's highway rest stops for three years.

Even so, 11 deputy clerks in Virginia Beach are losing their jobs and the rest of the staff will take a furlough, Circuit Court Clerk Tina Sinnen told The Pilot last week. Norfolk's clerk has laid off seven employees. In Chesapeake, six were slated for layoffs. Portsmouth's clerk anticipates losing four.

Virginia Beach tried to soften the blow by giving Sinnen's office $75,000 to delay the cuts until mid-October, but city officials said, correctly, that they can't start funding state offices.

"I know it is a state responsibility, and [the state has] shunned that responsibility for years," Sinnen said. "I understand [Virginia Beach] doesn't want to start a precedent. But I just let [11] good people go."

At what point, she asked, do the cuts affect the office's ability to record documents accurately, process fees, do the tasks they are required by law to perform?

In Norfolk this year, clerks' errors in two unrelated cases resulted in the release of men from jail who were later suspected in killings.

Sinnen understandably worries that there will be more mistakes as clerks are asked to work faster and handle more duties.

"At what point do I get sued?" she asked.

It's a fair question for Gov. Tim Kaine and the General Assembly.