There’s a certain irony that over the summer, 15 county commissions in Florida, from some of the smallest counties to the largest, came up with county funds to help their clerks of court pay for court-support operations. Except for office space, that was supposed to have ended in 2004, with the implementation of a constitutional amendment.

There’s less irony in another fact. Clerks in their 2019-20 fiscal year had less revenue to pay for their court support operations than they had in 2005.

The budget crisis is because COVID-19 has exacerbated an ongoing problem of over reliance on revenues from traffic court to pay for other court operations, clerks say, and has caused Florida’s 67 clerks to shorten hours, furlough employees, and not fill open jobs.