“Alabama’s court system is in crisis,” said Charles Story, president of the Alabama Circuit Clerk’s Association and the circuit clerk of Chambers County.

St. Clair County may be about to feel the sting of that crisis, as well.

Currently there are 14 employees split between the Ashville and Pell City circuit clerk’s offices paid for by the state.

Those offices will lose five employees and three part-time employees, leaving a staff of nine full-time staff members split between both offices.

Because the three part-timers work 40 hours between them, Circuit Clerk Annette Hall said in essence, she’s losing eight people.

The circuit clerk’s office is the hub of the trial court system. With insufficient funding and staffing, the state’s representative said offices will not be able to timely perform their constitutional duties.

To name a few, the St. Clair offices serve the district attorney’s office, community corrections, sheriff’s office, small claims court, individual citizens and child support services.

“It’s going affect so many different people,” Hall said.

She and the state representative both agreed the public should be prepared for additional waiting time and delay in many cases.

“We are going to do our very best and we’ll still be working to process in a timely manner, but the volume doesn’t decrease,” Hall explained. “It’s growing every year and we have less people now to process a lot for so many different people and organizations.”

But there might be hope for the organizations and members of the public her office serves.

“I’m hopeful to maybe keep some [employees] with some additional funding I’m trying to secure,” Hall said Tuesday, but added of the proposed situation, “It’s going to be very detrimental. The circuit clerk’s office is a collection agency for so many different businesses, and constituents of St. Clair County.”

Statewide, last year circuit clerk’s offices handled more than 1.2 million cases and almost $386 million earmarked for various agencies, the state’s general fund, litigants and victims of crime.

The cuts come after now-retired Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb issued an administrative order directing circuit clerks to close offices to the public up to 10 hours per week. The decision was made due to inadequate funding of the judicial branch in Alabama, resulting in the massive layoffs of 253 more court specialists in clerk’s offices at the end of the month.

Between last year and this past spring, 242 judicial employees were laid off statewide.

According to a statewide release sent to circuit clerks, offices are still reeling from prior layoffs: circuit clerk’s offices are now operating at 65 to 70 percent and will be further reduced to staffing levels around 40 to 45 percent.

There will be 12 counties left with only two employees, leaving an untenable situation if someone is out sick, on lunch break or needs to assist a judge in a courtroom, the release explained.

“Years of training and experience in handling complex court matters are being removed from our offices,” said Story, president of the Circuit Clerk’s Association.

Chief Justice Cobb’s order to reduce the number of hours the public can served will not save the court system money, Story continued. Instead, it will allow remaining court employees to devote more time to court-related duties in an effort to prevent a backlog of court filings.

“This next round of cuts will be crippling to us,” Story said. “Our employees are dedicated to their jobs and we will do the best that we can with limited resources.”