Credit: County of Bucks
Bucks County’s register of wills and clerk of the orphans’ court is not happy about a computer system Pennsylvania officials are spending millions on.
Register of Wills Don Petrille, who was first elected in 2011, said in a letter sent to LevittownNow.com that the state’s new computer system designed to manage all register of wills and orphan’s court filings is “burning public money to recreate existing office software.”
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Currently, Petrille ‘s office uses software purchased through a public bidding process to handle the tasks the new system, which is paid for through filing and appeal fees, will eventually recreate. Bucks County is not alone in already having software that handles the tasks the new state software can take care of, Petrille said.
In his letter, Petrille notes the new software is being implemented through the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. The agency’s IT department currently has 250 employees and costs taxpayers more than $29 million in salaries and benefits.
In a letter provided to LevittownNow.com by Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts Director of Communications Jim Koval, the state office estimates that the computer system will only cost about $3 million over three years.
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Officials from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts said they recognize many of the state’s register of wills and clerk of the orphans’ court officers are against the implementation of the new system that they say will be “cost-beneficial to counties.” To avoid any problem in the future in framing your will, the best option is to consult with attorneys for wills and trusts who frame your will according to your choices and will also ensure that this will doesn’t cause any problems in near future during its implementation.
While Petrille calls for the state to consider scraping the new computer system, the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts appears to have no plans to back down.
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Below is Petrille’s full letter:
Only in Pennsylvania would spending millions of public dollars recreating something that already exists, and nobody wants be considered progress. But, with the Commonwealth currently gridlocked in a six month budget impasse, the General Assembly considering massive tax increases on Pennsylvania families, this is exactly what the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, (“AOPC”), is doing. As our schools and non-profits suffer without state funding, AOPC is recreating computer systems to manage all of Pennsylvania’s 67 county registers of wills and orphans’ court clerks’ offices. It is proceeding with this project, ignoring both Pennsylvania’s financial problems and the overwhelming opposition expressed by most of the end users of the proposed system.
Currently, most Pennsylvania registers of wills and clerks of the orphans’ court use privately licensed software systems to manage their offices, including legal filings and financial management functions. Local officials, consulting with constituents and members of the bar, choose systems which best meet their office needs through competitively and publicly bid contracts. Counties have made significant monetary investments in the software, which AOPC would have the counties set aside, in order for it to centrally control county offices. These software systems allow local officials to operate their offices efficiently, without placing the burden of public employees’ salaries, pension and health care costs on taxpayers.
This spring, AOPC began burning public money to recreate existing office software. At public expense, its employees traveled the Commonwealth, attempting to understand how county offices conduct business. It also began hosting software development conferences at its palatial training center in Mechanicsburg, expending monies on food, travel and lodging. Most of these expenses and the rule against perpetuities are paid for by a regressive $35.50 fee imposed on basic legal proceedings, including probates, adoptions, landlord-tenant actions, debt collection, criminal proceedings, civil actions, incapacitated guardianships and all associated appeals. These fees are disproportionately paid by minorities and vulnerable persons needing access to the courts, and were increased by 51% in 2014.
County registers and clerks, with the aid of sympathetic legislators, have been imploring the AOPC to consider a less costly alternative to achieve its stated goals. Local elected officials have offered to cooperate by using their current already functioning systems to transfer data to the state court system, which can use it in any lawful manner. The courts could then create registries of guardians and fiduciaries, access docket information and view document images. This technology currently exists, and will eliminate wasteful and duplicative expenses associated with AOPC’s current efforts.
Pennsylvania’s courts have been rocked by scandal. Whether it has been conflicts of interest in the building of the Philadelphia Family Court, unlawful campaign behavior, “kids for cash,” or inappropriate and pornographic emails, the judiciary must focus on reforming its own practices, not on managing constitutionally and statutorily separate offices. This is not the moment to allow a scandal plagued court system to waste millions in public dollars, expanding its authority to separately elected, independent offices.
AOPC has bristled at the suggestion that it, like so many Pennsylvania families, do more with less. As of mid-August, the AOPC employed over 250 people in its IT department alone, expending over $6.5 million dollars in fringe benefits, $ 4.3 million in pension contributions each year and $ 18.4 million in salaries. By using public employees to redevelop, and then to manage systems currently staffed by the private sector, these costs will only expand. By working with existing technology, many of these expenses could be reduced or redirected to other worthwhile judicial programs. Better yet, AOPC could scrap this monumental waste of scarce public resources, doing its part to either decrease Pennsylvania’s deficit or eliminate fees we all pay.
Below is Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts’ full letter:
For some time, a number — not all — of Pennsylvania’s orphans’ court clerks have been waging a campaign against a project of the state Judiciary to develop a single computer system for their offices that will integrate with existing statewide Judiciary information systems.
Amazingly, the extent of their efforts has included retention of the government relations arm of a large Philadelphia law firm to actively lobby their position!
To paraphrase the statement of some of the orphans court (OC) nay-sayers, only in Pennsylvania would a small group of office holders, paid at public expense, attempt to subvert through paid lobbyists and, frankly, a great deal of smokescreen, an effort to improve government services without the expenditure of tax dollars.
The fact is that the OC nay-sayers’ position challenges the basic principles of competitive procurement, is supported by neither logic nor fact, and is untenable in a modern court system. In response to a recent opinion piece published here, I would like to correct the record with facts.
Currently, orphans court clerks use eight or more disparate computer programs to perform record-keeping functions for the courts in our 67 counties. The Judiciary is using its nearly 30 years’ successful experience in court information technology to create a single OC system. When completed, citizens will for the first time have a consistent way to file and access orphans court records statewide, be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons of the work of these elected officials, and even use credit cards on-line to conduct transactions.
To try to thwart the Judiciary’s work, opponents claim first that their offices, established in the state Constitution, are not subject to direction by the judiciary, but the fact is that the Constitution, state law, and Supreme Court rules provide precisely that authority.
The opponents complain that Judiciary leaders will not meet with them to discuss their concerns and imply that their input is neither sought nor wanted in designing the new system. In fact, a time-tested process used by the Judiciary to develop this and all prior systems is driven by input from the users in regularly-scheduled “joint application development” (JAD) sessions. In addition to the JAD sessions there have been numerous meetings and discussions, variously, between them, court officials and staff, and legislators. In fact, a number of legislators publicly support this project’s implementation.
Worst of all, the opponents desperately rely on red herrings in their published opinion pieces with assertions that bear no relationship to this project or any of the Judiciary’s information technology work. It is both regrettable and shocking to realize how little some of the OC nay-sayers understand about the branch of government in which their offices exist and how readily they will conflate unrelated topics to try to make their case.
For example, funding for judicial computerization cannot be used to pay jurors or fund programs within another branch of government as they suggest since the Judiciary’s IT efforts are funded through dedicated user fees, not tax dollars. And, their assertion to the contrary, pursuit of this project quite obviously has no relationship to the Commonwealth’s current budget challenges.
The incremental cost of this project is not $18 million, but about $3 million over a three year period, a fact which we have noted to opponents. This is not an insignificant sum, but one that likely compares favorably to the total cost of OC clerks’ existing systems. For the record, the AOPC has publicly committed to work with OC clerks to minimize any loss of county investment in existing systems’ maintenance agreements (recognizing too that as those systems age, counties will never again have to make capital investments once the Judiciary system is implemented), which translates into county taxpayer savings.
Finally, counter to OC nay-sayers’ assertions, the Judiciary’s intent has little to do with control and nothing to do with the collection of fees. Proof in point: In other county court offices where statewide systems have been implemented, the day-to-day control of those offices clearly remains with the local elected (or appointed in home rule counties) officials as it will in OC clerks’ offices.
Rather, the Judiciary’s effort to extend its statewide, integrated case management system to orphans court clerks’ offices is about modernizing a system that dates to colonial times in a manner that is actually cost-beneficial to counties. Any remaining issue of control centers on the simple – though crucial – premise of the state Constitution and law that the Judiciary has and must exercise it authority to achieve that modernization.
We appreciate the work of orphans’ court clerks statewide and especially of those who have constructively participated in planning meetings to date, with whom we look forward to continued collaboration.
