San Francisco To Shutter Courtrooms; Lay Off 200 Workers

[The Northerner]

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Superior Court announced on Monday that it's laying off more than 40 percent of its staff and shuttering 25 courtrooms because of budget cuts.

Presiding Judge Katherine Feinstein said the actions were necessary to close a $13.75 million budget deficit caused by state budget cuts. She said the cuts mean it will take many more hours to pay a traffic ticket in person, up to 18 months to finalize a divorce and five years for a lawsuit to go to trial.

"The civil justice system in San Francisco is collapsing," Feinstein said.

Some 200 of the court's 480 workers will be let go by Sept. 30, including 11 of 12 commissioners who preside over a variety of cases. And she said it could get worse if optimistic revenue projections don't materialize by January.

Read more: http://www.ktvu.com/news/28586520/detail.html

[The Big Vetolski]

1. But, but, surely banning circumcisions and Happy Meals will solve

this crisis!

[EFerrari]

2. What does that have to do with the budget, exactly?

[The Big Vetolski]

3. It takes money to enforce those things, no? Probably not that much,

but I'm saying San Francisco has its priorities skewed in ways worthy of ridicule.

[EFerrari]

4. LOL. The right wing stereotypes are funny, especially on a liberal board.

The circumcision ban was floated by a wing nut, not by the city, and is being challenged by the ACLU.

The Happy Meal ban is not hard to enforce because there aren't that many McD's in San Francisco. It's not like they're going to try to create a black market for Happy Meals. LOL

On the other hand, San Francisco does have a health plan that has to be funded and at some point the supervisors decided that was more important than keeping all those courtrooms open. Sad for the lay off, though.

[The Big Vetolski]

5. I did not know about the health care plan, or I had forgotten, so...

thanks for pointing that out. Still, this nanny state crap of regulating what people can eat, or defining circumcision as child abuse(ludicrous!) or, as is now being proposed by some, to place fat kids in foster care while simultaneously voting for policies that keep fattening foods at a lower cost than vegetables is latte' liberal hypocrisy at its worst, and San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado are shining examples of it.

They disgust most Americans. And they should.

Policies like that give liberals a bad name.