Broward Hearing Officer Program Terminated... For Now Articles / News Posted by dpakula on Aug 13, 2008 - 03:20 PM Broward's successful traffic hearing officer program is coming to an end effective August 29, 2008 due to lack of funding. On September 2, 2008, county court judges will begin hearing all of the cases formerly handled by the hearing officers. We are talking about almost 60,000 cases per month. There are a couple of issues I will discuss in this blog: first, the warped logic of scrapping a profitable program due to lack of funding; second, where does this leave us in terms of case processing and how long will it last? I have given up on trying to make sense out of politics. But I can't help but observe the irony involved here. The magistrate program was relatively inexpensive to operate. Yet it generated about $30 million in revenue to the State, $4.2 million to the County, and $2.1 million to the Cities in Broward County. Significantly, none of the revenues returned to fund the program. The funding came entirely from the State. So when budget cuts were inflicted on the judiciary this year, the hearing officer programs across the state fell victim. Hearing officers were vulnerable to budget cuts because it's a lot easier to fire them than to let go judicial and clerical staff. The irony, of course, is that due to the odd way the program is funded and fiscally maintained, a program that creates huge revenues for the state is being axed due to insufficient state funding. It's almost enough to convert me into a born again partisan of the "less government is better" school of thought. But then I remember that those are the folks that are largely responsible for this mess. So where are we now? Having been a Broward traffic hearing officer myself, I can tell you from personal experience of hearing a large volume of traffic cases that the Broward County Judges are not going to enjoy hearing those 60,000 additional cases per month in addition to their other usual responsibilities. Broward is not one of those lazy southern hamlets in which the judges have time for a round of golf in the afternoon. Our judges are already really busy. Adding traffic cases to the judges' other dockets is sure to create judicial migraines. Adding traffic cases to the county judges' responsibilities will also create problems for the administration of justice. In the very near future, the judges are going to be looking for ways to streamline the traffic dockets. The saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity will in all likelihood force the judges to adopt indiscriminate procedures such as making across-the-board plea offers to resolve dozens of cases in one fell swoop. In my view, this would not serve the interests of justice. The judiciary is supposed to judge each case on its merits, rather than lumping a bunch of cases into the same processing bin. The judges may devise a better streamlining method than the one I have mentioned, and I wish them the best of luck in finding a fair solution. However, I cannot imagine that the judges will be able to devise a more efficient and judicially sound method of hearing cases than the hearing officer program. I see the day coming in the not distant future when emergency funding will be located from somewhere -- I know not where -- to reinstate the traffic hearing officer program in Broward, and probably elsewhere in the State of Florida. The hearing officer program has become an integral part of our system of justice, especially in Florida's more densely populated counties. We can't afford not to fund these programs. This article is from Florida Traffic Ticket Defense   http://floridatrafficticketdefense.com/ The URL for this story is:   http://floridatrafficticketdefense.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=22