Courts Need More Staff To Manage Spike In Bankruptcy Filings

[Purveyor]

Source: FEDERAL TIMES

Federal courts say they need to hire more support staff to deal with a sharp spike in bankruptcy filings.

The Judiciary’s fiscal 2010 budget request calls for $30 million to hire 754 new support staffers. Judge Julia Gibbons of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told lawmakers Thursday that many of those new hires will be bankruptcy clerks, although she did not say how many bankruptcy clerks the courts want to hire. Gibbons appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government.

The courts expect bankruptcy filings will increase by 27 percent this year to 1.2 million as more people face foreclosures and other financial problems caused by the poor economy. Gibbons said more businesses are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcies, which tend to be large, complex cases.

The courts are asking for $6.6 billion in discretionary funds for fiscal 2010, $562 million more than this year.

The budget increase would also pay for:

Read more: http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3998199

[Demeter]

1. See! The Stimulus Package Is Creating Jobs Already!

[No Elephants]

7. It's the bad economy that created the bankruptcies and the bankruptcy

court jobs, much like the plague was probably good for the funeral industry of the day.

[CatholicEdHead]

2. Ouch

[Supersedeas]

5. tip of the ice berg, i'm afraid

[antimatter98]

3. Americans go bankrupt, while Obama hands trillions to the banks. Why did we vote for this? n/t

[No Elephants]

6. We didn't vote for the TARP, but I don't know whether the people who did

had much of a choice. And that was when Bush was in office, btw.

You seem to be getting more angry at the guy trying to put out the fire than at the ones who poured kerosene on the global economy for years before Obama even announced his candidacy.

[dbackjon]

4. Why do they need 4.2% raises??

Freeze raises like the rest of America

[tonysam]

8. Gee, and I Thought Bankruptcy "Reform"

was supposed to reduce the numbers of people filing.