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A dozen sites
I'm diggin'

1. Find out how healthy your county is.

2. What's with all the Google anti-trust lawsuits?

*3. The Washington Post reports on why TV reporters have to be Jacks of All Trades now.

4. Here are the eight companies that gave the most to help Haiti.

*5. The number of U.S. millionaires rose 16 percent last year.

6. Find out why there will be a national Eggo waffle shortage until summer.

*7. The New York Times explains how women in the work force helped save Social Security.

8. Here are some great databases that newsrooms have created to help connect people with their community.

*9. Watch this online interactive story of the death of journalist Arthur Kasherman.

*10. CBS Radio News' Peter King explains how he broadcast from Haiti in the early days after the quake.

11. The FCC investigates the health and future of local news.

12. Levelcam lets you stabilize your handheld video.

All of my Diggin' sites are saved on Poynter's del.icio.us page.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but relies on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. We will correct errors and inaccuracies when we become aware of them.

What State Budget Cuts Mean for Courts

The problems that will come from states cutting court system budgets could be much larger than you might have imagined.

Judges, prosecutors and public defenders are warning that if court systems around the country lose money, as parks departments, schools and others have, we will all feel the effects.

Here are some excerpts from a Stateline.org summary of what is happening nationwide:

New Hampshire is suspending jury trials for a month to save an estimated $73,000. Utah's chief justice warned that every one of the state's 1,000 court employees could be furloughed for 26 days starting this month. In Minnesota, the state�s chief justice has taken the unusual step of going on a publicity tour to highlight court funding problems.

"Our state courts are in crisis," Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret Marshall told the American Bar Association on Monday (Feb. 16).

Compounding court shortfalls are caseloads that are on the rise in many areas, with foreclosures, contract disputes and other civil claims surging in the struggling economy. In Idaho, for example, civil case filings jumped an unprecedented 17 percent in 2008, the state courts administrator told a legislative panel in January.

The story explains how delays in the court system cost businesses and everyday folks money. If you are awaiting your day in court, you'll continue to rack up legal fees. If you are awaiting a court decision to a business question, it can keep your business in limbo, costing you money by the day. If you are awaiting a decision in a civil case, your medical expenses, for example, keep rolling while you wait:

In Florida, which recently announced it would lay off 280 court workers, or nearly 10 percent of its 3,100 court employees, business groups say the court system is so overworked and under-funded -- and civil case delays so long -- that the state�s already beleaguered economy could suffer further.

At a conference of business leaders in Miami in January, Tony Villamil, an economist and dean of the business school at St. Thomas University, estimated [PDF] that Florida faces more than $17 billion in lost economic output each year because of extensive civil case delays.

That figure, Villamil said, represents legal fees, lost interest payments and other expenses firms must pay -- or revenue they must forgo -- during protracted litigation. Villamil also estimated that more than 120,000 Florida jobs are �adversely impacted" by the court delays.

"It's too expensive to wait for our day in court," said William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, a subsidiary of the Florida Chamber of Commerce that advocates for pro-business changes to the state�s civil justice system.

The majority of criminal defense cases in America involve public defenders, who say the poorest among us will sit in jail for weeks without getting their cases into a courtroom; there simply are not enough public defenders to help them. Stateline.org reports:

In Kentucky, state-funded public defenders are sounding the alarm. Ed Monahan, the state�s chief public advocate, warned in a newspaper column this month that the justice system could "unravel" unless legislators appropriate more money to public attorneys for the current fiscal year. Public defenders will run out of funds by May and prosecutors will run out by June, he said.

"The lack of sufficient funds could result in up to eight weeks without defenders in the courtrooms," Monahan said. "When an innocent person goes to jail, the real criminal is free in the community, putting everyone�s safety at risk."

Monahan's office even has filed suit against the state, seeking permission to refuse new cases and citing annual workloads of up to 450 cases per attorney. A trial court rejected the plea.

Kentucky is not alone. Public defender's offices elsewhere, including statewide systems in Minnesota and Rhode Island and county-funded systems in Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, Tennessee, also have cut back on the services they can provide, according to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA), which advocates for public defenders.

Stateline.org says public defenders offices in Minnesota, Rhode Island, Arizona, Tennessee and Nebraska have had to cut back, while court employees in Florida, Utah, Iowa and Vermont are facing furloughs or layoffs.

Posted at 12:01 AM on Feb. 24, 2009

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