{"id":18077,"date":"2015-12-29T08:55:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T13:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=18077"},"modified":"2015-12-29T08:56:57","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T13:56:57","slug":"oped-state-courts-seek-to-control-county-row-office-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=18077","title":{"rendered":"Op\/Ed: State Courts seek to control county row office operations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judiciary hungry to seize fees\u00a0that help keep local taxes down<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Terri Clark<\/strong><\/span>, Chester County Register of Wills<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"TerriClark\"<\/a>

Terri Clark<\/p><\/div>\n

With Pennsylvania locked in a five-month budget impasse, the state\u2019s Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) is creating something that already exists at public expense.\u00a0 As our schools and non-profits suffer without state funding, AOPC is developing a computer system to manage all of Pennsylvania\u2019s 67 county registers\u2019 of wills and orphans\u2019 court clerks\u2019 offices.\u00a0 It is proceeding with this project without any sensitivity to Pennsylvania\u2019s financial problems, and ignoring the overwhelming opposition expressed by most of the end users of the proposed system.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, most Pennsylvania registers of wills and clerks of the orphans\u2019 court use privately licensed software systems to manage their offices. Local officials, consulting with constituents and members of the bar, choose systems which best meet their office needs through competitively and publicly bid contracts.\u00a0 Counties have made significant monetary investments in the software, which AOPC would have counties sacrifice under its plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

County registers\u2019, clerks and sympathetic legislators have been imploring the judiciary to consider a less costly alternative.\u00a0 The easiest alternative is for counties to transfer data they are already collecting to the state court system, which can use it in any lawful manner.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The AOPC has suggested that its system is necessary for \u201cjudicial uniformity\u201d from county to county. Any such issue is not caused by the software system but by differing local court rules and procedures.\u00a0 Local rules and court administrators are under the direct control of the judiciary, while registers of wills and other county row offices are independently elected and constitutionally obligated to manage their own affairs.\u00a0 If the state judiciary truly wanted uniform practice, it would first address the matters under its direct control.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Court related row offices in most counties are profit centers contributing to the operating budgets of their counties and decreasing overall property tax burdens.\u00a0 The judiciary is hungry to control the filing offices.\u00a0 In the past, the judiciary has expressed interest in circumventing the provisions of the state constitution and judicial code and transferring these duties to its supervision.\u00a0 The end game is clear.\u00a0 The judiciary wants the monies generated by county offices appropriated back to it in order to support its massive bureaucracy.\u00a0 That the AOPC not only wants control of the filings, but of the accounting, cashiering and credit card processing of the county offices illuminates this goal.\u00a0 If the state judiciary centrally controls the software, then it effectively controls the day to day operations of the offices.\u00a0 This runs afoul of the separation of powers ensconced in the state constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

The courts have bristled at the suggestion that they, like so many Pennsylvania families, do more with less.\u00a0 As of mid-August, the AOPC employed more than 250 people in its IT department alone, expending more than $6.5 million dollars in fringe benefits, $ 4.3 million in pension contributions each year and $ 18.4 million in salaries.\u00a0 By bringing systems currently managed by outside vendors in house, these costs will only expand.\u00a0 By working with existing technology, many of these expenses could be reduced or redirected to underfunded programs.\u00a0 AOPC should scrap this monumental waste of scarce public resources.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judiciary hungry to seize fees\u00a0that help keep local taxes down By Terri Clark, Chester County Register of Wills With Pennsylvania locked in a five-month budget impasse, the state\u2019s Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) is creating something that already exists at public expense.\u00a0 As our schools and non-profits suffer without state funding, AOPC is developing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[6947,6948,2494,6949],"class_list":["post-18077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-featured","tag-administrative-office-of-pennsylvania-courts","tag-county-revenue","tag-row-office","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18079,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18077\/revisions\/18079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}