ANOTHER BLOW FOR REGIONAL COUNSEL

You can often tell assistant regional counsel attorneys in the hallways of the REGJB. They're the ones with the slightly defiant look, tempered by the fact they work for a man best described as a bit "mesughenah." The dead give away however is when they buttonhole you and tell you how unfair it is that the counties refuse to pay their fair share of the regional counsel's budget.

A little background is in order.

When the State Legislature formed the Regional Counsel system, someone had the bright idea of requiring the counties of Florida to pay the fixed office costs (Rent, pens, paper clips, bottles of wine) of the various regional counsel offices. The counties got together and to make a complicated legal issue simple, their response to the legislature and Regional Counsel was...well this is a family blog, so lets just say the response had the letters "F" and "U" in it.

The Regional Counsels sued and lost in state circuit court and the first district court of appeals which held the applicable part of the law requiring the counties to pay unconstitutional.

Thursday afternoon things got worse when the Florida Supreme Court upheld the first DCA's decision in favor of the counties and against the Regional Counsel offices across Florida. The decision in Lewis v. Leon County is here.

It really stinks when your boss fires your best attorneys and no one will fund you and no one cares.

See You In Court.